


i don’t love you (and i always will)

by seekrest



Series: Kintsugi [4]
Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (I'll see myself out), (hah get it because he's the human torch), Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Found Family, Friends to Lovers, Hopeful Ending, Love after Loss, MJohnny endgame, Not a love triangle fic, Slow Burn, canon nudged so far left it doesn't even exist, its just me and my whims now, think Spider-Man: Blue take two
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:40:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29063739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest
Summary: “There it is.”“There’s what?” Michelle asks, Johnny shrugging before gesturing his now empty glass towards her.“You,” he says simply, as if it’s supposed to make sense to her even if— surprisingly— it does.“Good looking out,” Michelle says with a half-smile, Johnny shrugging nonchalantly as he turns back to the penthouse.“It’s what I do.”
Relationships: Michelle Jones & May Parker (Spider-Man), Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds, Michelle Jones & Tony Stark, Michelle Jones/Johnny Storm, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Series: Kintsugi [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988341
Comments: 97
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to gru for holding my hand for months about this and for blondsak for patting me gently on the head & telling me to go with my gut (and also credit for the GENIUS ship name that is MJohnny)
> 
> This is part 4 of a series that you don’t have to read but it’ll make a lot more sense if you did. 
> 
> Once again, from the bottom of my heart—
> 
> My bad.

“You okay?” 

Michelle huffs out a laugh, taking a long swig of her beer as she looks out over the skyline of Stark’s fancy penthouse. She glances at Johnny standing beside her, who takes a drink of whatever alcohol he currently possesses - a wine maybe, downing it like it was the cheap beer she has on hand that Tony only bought specifically for her.

For _him_. 

It hits her suddenly, as it usually does now - a part of her desperately hoping that there was some day when it wouldn’t and yet another, greater part of her hoping that she doesn’t ever lose this feeling. The feeling of such deep, inescapable and all-consuming loss was enough to bring her to her knees most days but Michelle would take it, take it every single day that she felt it, because of how much she desperately feared the alternative. 

_“I’m gonna love you forever,” he said— holding her close, so close— not close enough._

_“You’re cheesy as hell you know that?”_

_“I mean it, MJ,” he whispered, “Forever. You and me against the world.”_

_“That’s codependency,” she’d joke, hearing him groan._

_“MJ—“_

_“Fine, you dork,” she’d whisper, softly, just against his lips._

_“Forever?” Hopeful— so hopeful— always so—_

_“Till the heat death of the universe,” she replied._

_He’d laugh. Hold her tighter._

_“Till then.”_

Johnny must sense her change in mood and how quickly she gets lost in her thoughts— her memories, her emotions, just barely on the hint of a spiral— because he positions his body towards her a bit more, nudging her gently with his elbow until she meets his eyes. 

“I mean it. You doing okay?” He asks, Michelle blinking a few times before giving him a half-smile as she shrugs. 

“You know how it is,” she says, giving a side-long glance to Johnny who just smiles back at her, Michelle noticing how it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, looking more worn and exhausted in a way that’s painfully familiar to her. “I do.”

They sit in a quiet, not quite comfortable silence — too mired in their respective griefs to be of any comfort or help to the other.

Michelle knows rationally that she is not the only one hurting. That every single person of significance to his life, nearly every person in the penthouse behind them carried a Peter-shaped hole in their heart, now that he was gone. 

But unlike everyone else in that room, Johnny was the last one to see Peter alive— had been right there with her when they saw him leave out the window for a problem he wouldn’t be able to fix, for a threat that would prove fatal.

Johnny knew what it was like to love Peter, knew what it was like to _lose_ him— and what was worse, Michelle thought, only Johnny knew what it was like to watch him die— with no chance of ever reversing it. 

“Just a regular bunch of fuck ups, huh?” Michelle says with a small laugh, Johnny snorting before glancing over to him.

“Me, maybe but you? Just as perfect as the day I met you.”

Michelle laughs a bit more loudly at that, feeling lighter in a way that she only really does when she’s with Johnny. 

He seems to know it too, smiling at her with warm brown eyes that remind her a little much of Peter’s— tan brown skin and a megawatt smile that reminds her that he _isn’t_ as he says, “There it is.”

“There’s what?” Michelle asks, Johnny shrugging before gesturing his now empty glass towards her. 

“ _You_ ,” he says simply, as if it’s supposed to make sense to her even if— surprisingly— it does.

“Good looking out,” Michelle says with a half-smile, Johnny shrugging nonchalantly as he turns back to the penthouse.

“It’s what I do.”

Michelle doesn’t quite know how to answer that just as Johnny seems to grow quiet, Michelle’s mind going back to that _last_ day, before the end of everything— of how much they’d joked at Peter’s expense as he left out of that window, only for it to turn into panic not long after.

She hates that she still vividly remembers how Johnny looked when she arrived at the medbay, unbeknownst to her that she really should’ve gone to the morgue. 

Johnny had been there for her a lot in the past year— even for as much as he clearly struggled with the weight of his own grief. 

Johnny had been there for _Peter_ , in the end. The fact that he was still functioning, still breathing, still hanging on and waking up every day, still _throwing himself out there as the Human Torch_ — spoke volumes to her.

It didn’t escape her notice that the one person who was out here with her wasn’t May, wasn’t Ned, wasn’t Tony or anyone else.

It was Johnny. 

Michelle wondered if maybe that meant something. 

She wondered about a lot these days. 

* * *

“Gin.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ned says, sucking his teeth before laying the cards back down on the table. Michelle grins as Ned sighs and says, “you set me up.”

“Should’ve stopped while you were ahead, Nedward,” she says with a smile, Ned returning it as they gather the cards back together.

He hands her his stack, the two of them falling into a comfortable silence as Michelle folds them together only for Ned to ruin it when he asks, “How’s everything going with Johnny?”

Michelle snaps her head up, forcing a blank expression on her face as she stares at Ned. 

Ned for his part just looks curious, interested— though Michelle knows by now that if Ned asked a question, it was usually for a reason.

_He didn’t used to, before. He’d just ask questions— ask them and ask them and ask them, everything from the interesting to the mundane to the hilarious— the echoes of Peter’s laughter still filling her insides with a mix of ache and longing._

“Fine I think,” Michelle says, turning her attention back to the cards as she shuffles them together. “Think he’s still on that SHIELD mission.”

“You think or you know?” Ned asks carefully, Michelle looking back up at him only to squint. 

“Why?”

“Just wondering,” Ned says in that same careful tone, avoiding her gaze as Michelle starts to pass out the cards again, “I haven’t heard from him so I didn’t know if you had.”

“You’re his roommate,” Michelle says with a smirk, feeling as if they were dancing around the edge of something— though what Michelle hadn’t quite figured out yet. “You’d know sooner than I would.”

Ned hums noncommittally, the sound bothering her in so much as it felt as if he was being _too_ casual— as if there was a point to his line of questioning. 

A point that Michelle couldn’t put her finger on. 

“He hasn’t texted you?” Michelle asks, reorganizing the cards and debating whether or not she wants to play another game as Ned shrugs.

“Nah but he gets like that. Focused. Not like—” Ned cuts himself off, just as Michelle freezes. The both of them sit there silently, waiting for the other to respond.

It happened often enough that Michelle could see the rest of the night going one of two ways— the two of them making their excuses, calling it a night and going back to their own respective quiet spaces.

Or the other, more frequent path they would take as of late, Michelle seeing Ned smile before saying, “Peter was shit at paying attention to things, huh?”

“The worst,” Michelle says, Ned looking up to her briefly— a quick check to see that she was okay.

She was, tonight at least. It didn’t always hurt to think about Peter— _a lie, a fucking lie, it always hurt to think about Peter, even on the good days still missing him more than she could even say—_ and it was nice to be around someone who knew him just as well if not better than she did, to have shared memories in the way the three of them only ever could. 

It was different with May, with Tony, even with Johnny— Ned Leeds was Peter Parker’s best friend and the closest person to him alive, save for May. 

If anyone understood what it was like to have to navigate a world without Peter Parker and the gaping hole that he left behind, it was Ned.

But that gaping hole— _never filled, it could never be replaced_ — felt that much easier to wade through when she was with Ned, shaking her head as she says, “I don’t know how he made it so long without his guy in the chair.”

It’s a stupid, morbid joke— one that Michelle has a half-second to regret only for relief to flood through her when Ned laughs, throwing his head back and filled with a rare kind of joy that felt good to see.

“Seriously, MJ. He was _pathetic_.”

“An absolute disaster,” she replies, Ned grinning at her as she smiles back at him-- love and loss and years worth of friendship telling her that the slight shift in his expression was a check to make sure she was still okay.

She smiles a little wider, meaning it as she turns her attention back to the cards and says, “At least _Peter_ could hold his own in gin. You suck more than _he_ did. Soak that in for a second.”

“Oh _harsh_ , MJ. _Harsh_ ,” Ned scoffs, Michelle dealing out the cards.

It was nice, for a moment, to forget. To joke. To feel like everything was okay. 

It wasn’t ever going to be, Michelle knew that just as well as Ned did. 

But it was still nice. Quiet. Easy.

Michelle could be glad for that.

* * *

“Whatever you’re doing, stop it immediately.”

Michelle laughs, watering the ficus that was making a valiant effort to die on her as she cradles the phone between her head and her shoulder-- _feeling_ Johnny’s smile on the other end as she asks, “Not all of us are living on the government’s dime, J.”

“You’re telling me you _wouldn’t_ take advantage of the opportunity to live in rent-free high tech housing if you didn’t have the chance? Stick it to the man and completely _waste_ the time of some stuffy politician with a god complex by purchasing the most outrageous leather shoes you could possibly find?”

Michelle snorts, watering the ficus with a bit more gumption before saying, “Wow. Good to know you are putting our tax dollars at work.”

“I’m just kidding, it wasn’t leather shoes.”

Michelle waits a beat, making a face even if Johnny couldn’t see it through the phone, only to laugh when he finally replies, “It was leather _pants_.”

“Seriously, I do not understand you,” Michelle says, walking over to the sink and rinsing out the cup she used to water her plant, mentally calculating what other plants she needs to tend to as she continues, “you have one of the biggest platforms on the _planet_ and you willingly sign up to be a government shill? You’re worse than Stark.”

Johnny lets out an offended gasp, over the top and just shy of obnoxious as he always is as Michelle grins-- only to open her mouth in shock when she sees Johnny staring at her through her living room window, all flamed up and motioning for her to open up.

“What the— J, what the hell?” She says, ending the call and rushing to the window— the heat from Johnny’s flames immediately causing her hair to raise.

Johnny depowers instantly, his short dark curls that have only recently been dyed blonde at the tips singing still a little at the edges as he grins and steps into the apartment.

“You do realize I have neighbors right? Neighbors who are gonna want to know why the fucking _Human Torch_ is flying into my apartment?” Michelle asks, Johnny closing the window behind him and shrugging. 

“It was quicker than the stairs.”

“It was _not_ quicker than the stairs, _you_ just like to show off,” Michelle says with a scoff, looking at him up and down before asking, “What are you wearing?”

“You like it?” Johnny asks, Michelle chewing the inside of her cheek as Johnny models what looks to be a new suit. It’s different than his old one, more _blue_ than what Michelle would’ve chosen but what did she know— getting an MFA at NYU rather than one of the million and one focus groups that Reed Richards had probably employed. 

“It’s… a choice,” she says, Johnny frowning and mouth upturning into a pout.

“You hate it.”

“I didn’t say I hated it, I said it’s a choice,” Michelle amends, Johnny rolling his eyes.

“I liked you better when you told me like it is.”

“And I liked _you_ better when you didn’t make my apartment smell like a smokehouse,” Michelle replies, her nose wrinkling as Johnny has the decency to look sheepish. 

“Sorry. Actually _not_ sorry,” Johnny apologizes and then not, Michelle laughing again as he walks with purpose towards her kitchen, “Sue’s got me on this new kick of only apologizing for things I’ve explicitly done wrong rather than preemptively apologizing when I haven’t done anything at all.”

“And you think waltzing into my apartment, uninvited, _drinking my almond milk_ ,” Michelle deadpans, making a face as Johnny has the absolute audacity to open up her fridge, unscrew the cap of her carton of almond milk and down it, “ _isn’t_ wrong?”

“No,” Johnny says simply, a sheen of almond milk over his lips as he wipes them clean with the back of his hand, “because you are gonna thank me when I tell you what we’re doing tonight.”

Michelle throws her hands up, shaking her head as she asks, “What are we doing tonight?”

“First,” Johnny says, grinning as he throws the now empty carton of almond milk away, “we’re gonna go to the store and stock you up on the good shit. None of this bodega almond milk. It’s cheap and gross and I honestly just did you a favor.”

“Johnny—”

“Second,” Johnny says, walking out of her kitchen with a massive grin on her face, “I had to rush over here because _someone_ got tickets to the Boleria exhibit.”

Michelle freezes, short-circuiting for a moment before she says, “You what?”

“The Boleria exhibit,” Johnny repeats, brown eyes boring into hers just as his brown skin is illuminated by the soft fairy lights Michelle has on in her apartment, “You wanted to go right?”

“I—fuck yeah,” Michelle says with a surprised laugh, shaking her head in disbelief, “I just-- I thought it was booked solid.”

“It _was_ ,” Johnny says teasingly, “for someone normal. But for the _Human Torch_ …” 

Johnny grins, raising his eyebrows as Michelle rolls her eyes again. 

“Not so tough now are you? Wanna retract what you said about me being a drain on taxpayer dollars?”

“No,” Michelle replies, Johnny looking back at her and laughing incredulously, “You can be two things at once. You of _all_ people should know that it’s possible to have two things be true at the same time.” 

“And what’s that?” He asks, grinning at her and playing the same kind of stupid that she knows he isn’t as she shakes her head.

“The first,” she says, putting a finger up, “is that you’re an arrogant little asshole who willfully wastes the money and time of taxpayers _and_ the government that makes me wonder if I should hit you or hug you.”

“Solid, good observation, not the first time I’ve heard that,” Johnny says gamely, Michelle putting up a second finger.

“And two, you’re my new favorite person cause the Boleria exhibit is going to be incredible.”

“What makes you think I’d invite you now, after you just so thoroughly insulted me?” Johnny asks with a wink, Michelle laughing at him.

“Cause I’m your only real friend, Storm.”

“Ouch, that hurts. I’ll tell Ned you said that,” he says slyly, Michelle making a face.

“Ned puts up with you. I, against my will, actually like you.”

The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them, knowing that for anyone else they’d be fairly benign and simple. But for Johnny Storm—the Johnny who’s seen her at her worst for the better half of a year, who joked with her over movie nights when there were four of them all together, who like Ned— held her hand when they buried their fourth member, who’s surprisingly been one of the few people that she actually enjoys their company in a way that didn’t come easy to her— knows how significant that is. 

Michelle doesn’t have a lot of luck getting close to people. Getting to know Johnny when he came back from the Negative Zone and then clinging to each other in the wake of Peter leaving all of them— it surprised her.

_She didn’t have a lot of luck getting close to people, but she let Peter in. She let Peter in— into her mind, her heart, her body, her life. And then he left— he left and he’s gone and she can still feel it clutching at her chest, suffocating with the weight of it._

In typical Johnny fashion, he treats her words as a joke— eyes widening and his mouth turning into a full-fledged grin as he playfully mocks her saying, “You _like_ me?”

“I take it back,” she says, groaning as Johnny snickers.

“You really, really _like_ me. I’d like to thank Sue, my manager Teri, Reed and then even dear old Ben because—”

“Get out of my apartment.”

Johnny just laughs, Michelle smiling back at him— feeling good, feeling happy— the good days coming a lot more than the bad days ever did. 

It wouldn’t always be good, and she certainly didn’t always feel happy. 

But she did today. With Johnny, with his news, with the ficus that was just as stubborn as she was.

She was feeling happy. Today. Right now. 

Michelle could hold on to that. 


	2. Chapter 2

“You want marshmallows?” May calls out from the kitchen, Michelle bundling the blanket around her as she grabs the remote to turn Netflix on. 

“I’m good, thanks May,” she says as May takes a beat to come in, holding two steaming mugs of cocoa in each hand. Michelle takes the one that May extends out to her, the same mug she’s used for years — sans marshmallows — as she thanks her.

_“You got a mustache now.”_

_“Parker—“_

_“A marshmallow mustache, geez,” he said with a laugh. She rolled her eyes and he kissed her— on the cheek, on the lips, grinning as he did._

_“You’re a softie.”_

_“Shut up.”_

May settles on the couch next to her as Michelle blows on the cocoa to cool it down, moving the blanket so that they could both share with each other. 

“What are you in the mood for tonight?” Michelle asks, just as at home in May’s apartment as she was in her own as May hums.

“Whatever you’re feeling. Saw there’s another documentary on the Black Dahlia coming out.”

“Always a good option,” Michelle says with a smile, glancing over to May who warmly returns it as Michelle scrolls through the options till she finds the show May was talking about.

She starts it up, the two of them falling into a companionable silence for the first half of the show— barring any commentary and jokes Michelle already has about the inaccuracies or missing facts— when May throws her with a question she hadn’t anticipated. 

“How’s Johnny doing?”

Michelle snaps her head towards her, confused for why the second time in so many weeks that someone is asking her how Johnny is doing. The first was a fluke but twice— from May nonetheless— was confusing, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she asks, “Have you heard anything?”

May seems to catch on immediately, face falling before she quickly shakes her head, “Oh! No, not— you know I don’t keep up much with what all of them are doing.”

_She used to— Peter didn’t know it but she did, May reading every morsel and scrap of news that she could find. She used to hate it, she did hate it. But Michelle knew was well as May did that not knowing was worse._

_May didn’t read the news about superheroes anymore._

“I just know you’re close,” May says kindly, Michelle holding her gaze for a beat as May smiles.

“Yeah. He’s— he’s alright,” Michelle says, feeling flustered even if she can’t articulate why. She sneaks a glance to May whose attention is focused back on the screen, Michelle not getting the impression at all that she has any other intentions other than curiosity even if it strikes her that someone’s asking _her_ about Johnny. 

It was weird from Ned since he’s his roommate but maybe not so much from May who to Michelle’s knowledge, doesn’t necessarily talk to Johnny nearly as much as she would. Not consistently at least, even now thinking that if her memory serves her correctly-- Johnny had been the one to join May for a few nights of Hanukkah while Michelle was with her own family. 

“I think he’s off on a SHIELD mission,” Michelle says casually, as if she doesn’t know for sure now-- curious after Ned had originally asked her about it. It was easy enough to figure out the schedule of the Four, not just because he was a public figure and his schedule was public because of it but Johnny was also an obscenely popular social media star-- using his platform for the silly and the serious in equal measure. 

It was so different to how Peter used his platform, his personal social media being relatively non-existent and the “official” Spider-Man account being pictures that made her think it was a matter of time before people connected relative nobody _Bugle_ photographer Peter Parker with _Spider-Man_.

Michelle catches herself, startling enough to spill a little bit of the hot chocolate she has on her shit as May looks back at her curiously.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, shit, sorry just spilled some I’ll--” she motions towards her shirt, extricating herself from the couch as she carefully sets the mug down on May’s side table. “I’m gonna clean this up.” 

May just smiles as Michelle moves to a stand, holding onto her shirt and frowning as she moves to the kitchen to quickly try and get the stain out of it. Michelle’s hand shakes as she turns the water on, her other hand holding tightly to her shirt as she stares at the stain.

It happened less and less-- something Michelle wasn’t sure if she was glad or thankful for-- these sudden thoughts about Peter. It was normal, routine, something she used to do all the time. Michelle didn’t make it a habit of letting people into her world but she let Peter in-- to the point that now, a year and a half after he was gone, that she still caught herself thinking of him in the present tense.

Michelle exhales slowly, closing her eyes and grounding herself in the moment with the things that she can taste and touch, her therapist’s words ringing back in her ears as she lets herself sit in the moment before opening her eyes and begins sprinkling water and soap on the cocoa.

As she rinses it out, her mind wanders-- wondering if it was a good thing, a healthy thing, a bad thing, or _anything_ that she still thought of Peter in the present tense, that she compared Peter to _Johnny_ while doing so.

Michelle makes a face, turning off the water and dabbing at the stain with the towel May has laid out over the sink-- a warmth in her chest at the memory that it was a towel that _Peter_ had ruined once during a failed attempt at cooking dinner.

Her thumb gently grazes over the edge that’s burnt off, smiling to herself. 

Peter would always be in the past now.

But he was still in her present. Would always be in her present. 

Michelle found some comfort in that.

* * *

“Is this good?” 

“Yeah,” Michelle says as Brad’s breathing starts to get heavier, hitching her legs around him as he moans, “yeah it’s good.”

It’s not quite _good_ but it’s good enough, particularly for the way Brad wraps his arms around her waist, grinding into her as she gasps. 

“Like that,” she pants out, glad that Brad is better at taking direction than Yanis had been as he dives into her, grunting as he puts all his focus into hitting at that _just_ perfect spot inside of her.

“Are you close?” He pants, his grip on her tightening as she nods-- working her own hips in sync with him and feeling closer by the second. 

“Touch me, just-- touch--” she moans, grinding her hips up as Brad thrusts into her. Her orgasm is nearly overwhelming, in no small part for how much she worked herself up in the hour it took for Brad to show up-- glad now that she did as she came with a gasp. 

Brad’s grunting takes on a new frenzied pace but Michelle doesn’t care, her limbs going lax and chest heaving as she closes her eyes and rides the endorphins of the best orgasm she’s had with a partner in a long time. 

When Brad comes, Michelle’s still coming down from her own high-- shifting off her and falling down on his back as he pants, Michelle staring up at the ceiling as he says, “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Michelle says, making a mental note to keep tabs on Brad’s number as she pushes some hair past her face.

They sit there in silence for a bit, Michelle still catching her breath when Brad sits up-- running a hand through his hair before looking back at her.

“You’re incredible,” he says with a laugh, Michelle smirking as she stretches. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she says, briefly entertaining the possibility of asking him to stay over only for Brad’s _beeper_ to go off-- remembering the whole reason it took him a while to get to her apartment in the first place. 

“I’m sorry, I gotta--”

“It’s fine,” Michelle says, relieved now that she didn’t have to make a decision on letting Brad stay over, sitting up as Brad moves into a stand to leave for the hospital.

“We should uh, we should do this again sometime? Maybe?” Brad asks as he ties off the condom and actually makes the trash, another notch in his favor. He grabs his underwear, Michelle huffing out a laugh as she nods. 

“Yeah. Yeah for sure,” she says as Brad easily slides into his briefs and dress pants in one fell swoop, “I got your number and you got mine so…”

“Yep,” Michelle says, feeling that awkwardness she hasn’t felt in years but is intimately aware of now in the past few months of tepid hookups that she’s accumulated.

Brad’s the first one where she actually means it when she says they hope they meet again, smiling as Brad gives her a tentative kiss as he walks over to her side of the bed, Michelle grabbing her robe as she walks him out of her apartment. As soon as he leaves, Michelle locks the door behind him and presses a palm against the door-- putting her head against it and willing for her heart rate to slow. 

_“Does it bother you, that you weren’t my first?”_

_“Does it bother you that you weren’t mine?” He asked instead of answering, Michelle smirking as she wrapped noodles around her chopsticks._

_“Just checking. You get a little… weird when I talk about her.”_

_“I don’t get weird about her, I get weird about the timing.”_

_“We were broken up."_

_“For like, a week, MJ.”_

_“Don’t be a Ross, Peter.”_

_He gasped, properly offended as Michelle laughs. “I think that’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”_

Michelle laughs, lifting her head up as she smiles-- moving from the door and back towards the kitchen to start her kettle before walking over back to her bathroom to pee. 

It’s when she’s washing her hands, letting the warm soapy water run over them that she surprises herself with how _okay_ she’s feeling. A morbid part of her wonders if the series of breakups and make-ups that had populated the better part of her relationship with Peter somehow prepared her for this-- of being without him and thinking of herself and her life without having him be a part of it. 

Yet even as she thinks it, she dismisses it-- if only because there was always the whisper in the back of her mind that they’d figure it out eventually. Their breakups had felt just that-- _breaks_ \-- when they figured out more of who they were outside of each other until it reached a point where the two of them decided that whatever they decided, they’d do it together.

There’s a bittersweetness to it now, that months after they’d decided to be together-- no matter what happens next-- that not even a year later that Peter would be the one to end things permanently. 

_Not by choice_ she thinks sadly, remembering Peter’s promise to love her forever. When they got back together, that final time, it felt permanent-- like they were finally all in, that they could stop going back and forth and work on loving each other for the rest of their lives.

It hits her as she turns the water off, looking at her reflection in the mirror. 

Michelle thought they were going to spend the rest of their lives together. 

She didn’t know that it would be that Peter would end up spending the rest of _his_ life with _her_. 

* * *

Michelle was glad for the good days.

The good days are when she thought of Peter and it didn’t make her feel her heart was going to explode out of her chest. 

The good days are when she was able to watch a movie and not feel like she’s suckered in the gut when she hears his voice in her ear, when she laughs at something that’s objectively not funny but _would_ be to him-- snickering into the bowl of popcorn she has and smiling at the screen.

The good days are when she’s able to go out with her friends, getting dinner and a few drinks and feeling a warm buzz in her gut and her head as she walked herself home-- or even walked home with someone else. 

The good days are when she goes over to her mom’s house for her hair to get braided, closing her eyes as her aunt works and chatters about whatever gossip that she’d missed out on since the last time-- joking that she’s still tender headed, Michelle joking back that her cousin Kendra is too hard headed for her own good-- the house being filled with laughter and food and a lightness that makes Michelle feel younger than she has in years. 

The good days are when she’s able to relish in her work, working hard to a deadline and getting lost in the pieces she’s working on even if they’re for a good grade-- glad that she decided to go to grad school and even more glad that she hadn’t taken a break like everyone had told her to do after Peter died.

The good days are when she’s able to meet up with Ned and Johnny and eat their weight in pizza, the two of them playing some video game that she pretends to know nothing about and laughing like she’s in college again and there’s nothing on earth that could touch her. 

The good days remind her that life is good-- that she is good, that there is _still good_ in the world-- something that she holds onto tight and cherishes each and every time that it happens.

Today was not a good day.

* * *

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

Michelle huddles further into the blanket, staring at her laptop screen on her lap without really watching as some cheesy CW drama plays out.

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

Michelle knows that she should check, if only to let whoever it is that’s being so persistent know that she’s alive and okay. 

_Okay_ might be a stretch but she was functioning, she was alive. She didn’t have a class today and the assignment that still needs to get done she at least had the mental bandwidth to let the professor know that it was going to be late. 

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

_BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ._

Michelle’s phone is going off so much that it’s about to fall off the little side table she has, frowning as she glances over to it. She’s still debating whether she wants to answer it when she hears a knock at her door, fully planning on ignoring it until she hears him call out, “I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”

Michelle rolls her eyes, realizing now why her phone was going off as much as it did as she sets her laptop aside-- rolling off the bed as the most annoying person she’s ever had the misfortune to meet continues to knock at her door like he’s on fire. 

She opens it in mid-swing, frowning as he has a hand extended with one hand-- bag of some kind of take out in another.

“Hungry?”

“This is harassment,” Michelle says, ignoring Tony Stark’s smile as he extends the paper bag towards her. 

“You can call it harassment or you can call it me using my wealth for the greater good?”

“The greater good is food delivery?” Michelle asks, eyes dancing between the food that he has in his hand and his face.

“For you? Absolutely,” he says gently, Michelle seeing the twinge of concern in his eyes and realizing that the collective group chat about her must have been going wild if the junior varsity was here.

Varsity squad was her mother but their concern was clearly serious enough that Tony was enlisted to visit her unannounced-- something that Michelle had gotten relatively used to when she and Peter were dating and was still getting used to now that Peter was dead. 

It was how Tony Stark loved-- with gifts, with trinkets, with obscene displays of wealth and no sense for personal boundaries. Michelle wasn’t surprised that Tony still made such an active effort to be a part of her life if only because the look on his face the day they buried Peter is one of the few things she remembers about that day-- catching his eye and seeing a conviction in them that told her without him even having to mention it that Tony wasn’t going anywhere just as much as May wasn’t.

She chews the inside of her cheek, looking back to the food when she asks, “What is it?” 

“Soup dumplings, from that place on 47th,” Tony says, holding it out for her even more when Michelle finally takes it. 

The bag is stapled together but there’s a weight to it, enough that it makes her raise an eyebrow as she asks, “for how many people?”

“Just you, I can’t stay. I was just in the neighborhood,” Tony outrageously lies, Michelle shaking her head as he waves a hand, “But there might be some other kind of leftovers in there. Surprises, things that’ll keep.”

“If there’s money in here, I’m throwing it out the window,” Michelle deadpans, Tony shrugging as he says.

“Redistribute how you see fit,” he taps the door frame, taking his sunglasses out of his front pocket of the actual suit he’s wearing, “I’ll see you later, Jones.”

He turns to walk away, Michelle swallowing down the lump in her throat before she says, “Thanks.” 

Tony pauses, sunglasses still in hand as his features soften.

“Anytime, kid.” 

Michelle closes the door without saying goodbye, locking it then setting the food on the counter before making a beeline towards her room-- the sadness weighing on her. She should eat something, not just because now with the smell of food her stomach’s finally starting to act mutinous but because soup dumplings didn’t keep well-- but she had to catch up on her messages, grabbing her phone and scrolling through the messages.

She has one from May and a few from Ned but surprisingly or not, the most are from Johnny-- a variety of gifs and emojis and several messages asking how she’s doing only to see the last few.

 **[3:34pm] Fire Hazard** : blink once if you want soup dumplings, blink twice if lo mein

 **[3:34pm] Fire Hazard** : no blinks got it. i’ll get you both.

 **[3:37pm] Fire Hazard** : and by me i don’t actually mean me.

 **[3:38pm] Fire Hazard** : I’m in some forest in Latveria now. 

**[3:38pm] Fire Hazard** : Don’t ask. 

**[3:41pm] Fire Hazard** : anyway he’s on his way cause i might’ve asked him to do this like twenty minutes ago but you know how rich people get. 

**[3:41pm] Fire Hazard** : like we GET IT you’re RICH get a REAL JOB

There’s a few more gifs and emojis that make her laugh, feeling the lump in her throat grow as she quickly types out a message.

 **[4:07pm] MJ** : got it. thanks. 

She’s going to end it before sending an emoji for good measure, her laugh feeling more like a sob when Johnny immediately replies with a string of heart emojis.

She’s glad he gets it, just as she’s touched that he’s going through all this trouble-- doing the mental math in her head for what time it was over there and thinking he was probably stupid enough to try and do a mission _and_ figure out take out for her all at the same time. 

She doesn’t push it though, not when it’s a nice gesture, not when it’s a bad day-- putting her phone back on the side table by her bed and burrowing herself back under the covers. 

Michelle will go out back to the kitchen soon enough, get her food and send more articulate thank you messages to them.

She could do it easily on a good day.

Today was a bad one.

But she still had people. 

Michelle tried to hold on to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna wait to post this until some time had settled but then i got tagged in this INCREDIBLE piece of art for this story and I decided to push ahead because ????? I'M SCREAMING????
> 
> anyway everyone [ check it out it and scream with me](https://ixoren.tumblr.com/post/642192588121735168/i-dont-love-you-and-i-always-will-of-the)


	3. Chapter 3

Michelle gazes up at the ceiling of Brad’s bedroom, closing her eyes as she bounces on Brad’s lap.

“Oh fuck. _Fuck._ That’s— that’s— fuck, you’re so tight,” Brad huffs out, his fingers digging into her hips as she moves from bouncing to grinding down.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Brad grunts, Michelle gasping as she leans forward to grab at his headboard, using it as leverage as she arches her back. 

She opens her eyes and looks at Brad who looks completely wrecked— face scrunched up like he was in pain. She laughs, only for Brad to open his eyes and frown as he thrusts his hips up into her.

“What?” He asks, Michelle panting as the sound of their bodies slap together— gripping the headboard tighter. 

“Nothing, just— nothing,” Michelle says, bringing one hand down to her clit and ready now for this to be over. 

“You— uh— you sure?” Brad says a little breathlessly, Michelle nodding as she balances her grip on the headboard and on her clit, moaning as she focuses solely on pleasure and less on the dick— or the person— she’s riding to get it. 

The orgasm she has is good and the way Brad seems interested in making sure she gets hers before his own is a plus but Michelle’s sure that this’ll be the last time they meet as she says goodbye— ignoring his not so subtle suggestion of her staying over, pleading an early morning. 

She does have an early morning but that’s not it— thinking back to how put off he’d been when she laughed during sex.

_“What was THAT?”_

_“Peter—“_

_He laughed, pausing mid-thrust to actually giggle as he burrowed his head into her neck. Michelle rolled her eyes as she laughed, Peter wheezing into her ear as he leans up and says, “Did you just fart?”_

_“You pooped with the door open yesterday,” Michelle says with a snort. “You are not in a position to judge me right now.”_

_“That is NOT the same thing, I was having an emergency, MJ,” he said with a laugh before he pulled out, only to slowly push back in and resume his movements._

_“Smelled like an emergency,” Michelle snickered only to moan when Peter licked his thumb and started playing with her nipple._

_“Retaliation by farting during sex. That’s low.”_

_“I can go lower,” she replied, only to gasp when Peter replaced his thumb with his tongue._

Maybe it was a fluke, Michelle thought when she finally got home— or maybe she didn’t explain herself. This thing, if it could even called as such, with Brad was new— a whole five times of meeting up for sex does not the start of a relationship make. 

But if Michelle’s learned anything it’s to trust her gut, trust the instinct, trust to know when or who it’s worth it to try and work for it with. 

Whatever “it” was— Brad didn’t have it. He seemed nice enough, good in bed and a doctor which was a step up from beat photographer for a shitty tabloid as far as her extended family was concerned even if they all knew the truth now. 

Her mom’s the first one she calls the next morning as she makes a cup of tea, staring at a blank canvas that she’s been mulling over for the better half of a week.

“No to Brad?” She asks not even five minutes into the conversation, a keen sense for her daughter in a way that would surprise no one whoever met Michelle.

Michelle was observant, after all. She had to have gotten from somewhere.

“No to Brad,” Michelle says to her mom before putting her on speaker, hearing her hum as Michelle takes a sip of her tea— holding the phone up to her face.

“And you’re okay?”

“I’m good, mom. Promise,” she says, meaning it as she smiles. She tilts her head, squinting at the blank canvas in front of her. 

“Won’t be good if I don’t get started on this piece though,” Michelle says with a laugh, her mom’s laughter on the other end loosening something in her chest. 

“Almost there, Meesh. Few more months and you’ll be a master at it,” she jokes as she always does, Michelle smiling as she rolls her eyes.

“You’re so corny.”

“I’m allowed,” her mom says definitively, Michelle hearing her dad say something in the background that she doesn’t catch only for her mom to say, “your father’s getting on my nerves this morning.”

“What’d he do this time?” Michelle jokes, hearing her father’s laughter on the other end and feeling a warmth in her chest from their playful banter as her mom begins some story that Michelle only half pays attention to.

She’s still staring at the canvas, still thinking of what it is that she wants to paint— day dreaming of someone else’s laughter in her apartment as she takes another sip of her tea.

* * *

“Go. Go. Go. Go,” Johnny says, headset skewed just off his head as he and Ned smash the buttons on their controller.

Michelle is curled up on the couch while they’re pressed up together on the floor, smirking as she looks up at them over her sketchpad. They look more like teenagers— a flash of a memory of two other boys curled up in front of a television, passing by just as quickly as she turns her attention back to her sketch.

The sounds of the video game— and Ned and Johnny’s commentary— fades into the background as she focuses, doodling practice sketches as she mulls over which draft she wants to work on now.

Michelle’s soft deadline for deciding on her final project, for herself at least, had come and gone— still torn over the variety of options she has available to her. 

They were all doable, just as they were all equally interesting— remembering the words from her advisor that her final piece didn’t have to the magnum opus that the rest of her cohort seemed to believe it is.

“It should describe you and your work yes, but it’s not the best you’ll ever do,” she’d told Michelle succinctly, another reminder for how glad Michelle was for a blunt advisor that told her like it is. “Don’t trip yourself up on the details.”

Yet it’s exactly the details that she can’t get away from, an indecision that’s so unlike her causing her to purse her lips as she rifles through the pages she has.

There’s the beginnings of a self-portrait, a cliche if there ever was one. She had a draft that illustrated her favorite corner of the apartment, another that was more abstract, yet another of her favorite view of the city— something she’d only ever seen because of Peter.

Michelle stops at a sketch that wasn’t her final project but was still half-finished, a morbid twist of irony at that as she gently runs her fingers across the page.

It was a sketch of Peter, how he looked when he was asleep— the only time that Michelle ever used to think that he was truly at peace.

The memory of how he looked in his casket, in the medbay and at a night just like she has depicted in the sketch all run through her mind in quick succession, fingers lightly tapping against the sketch as she takes a deep breath.

For months after Peter died, Michelle couldn’t bear to draw him— this sketch being one of many that still laid around unfinished. It wasn’t because it hurt too much— _it did—_ or that she hated the irony of a sketch of Peter being unfinished— _she did_ — that stopped her.

It was that to sketch him, to finish it, was to try and recreate him— to pull from her memories rather than life, knowing all too well how much a sketch or a painting of Peter when he was no longer there would serve more as a visual reminder of what Michelle _believed_ him to look like rather than what he _did._

It was a silly fear at the time but one that Michelle realized has some truth to it— fingers gently tracing over the half-finished lines that composed Peter’s face.

It hits her then that she can’t remember her last night with Peter— how he looked, what he was wearing, if they had sex or he just crept into bed. She tried hard, the sounds of the video game long faded away as she stared at the page only to keep coming up empty.

She can’t remember her last night with Peter because it was so perfectly mundane. Because it was their life, a life they had together— a life that ended and was buried and yet here Michelle was, still living.

Michelle bites her lip, realizing something else as she stares at the sketch.

She doesn’t feel bad about not remembering her last night with Peter. 

But Michelle isn’t sure how she feels about _that._

  
  


* * *

Time, as it does, keeps moving. It moves and it moves and it moves until Michelle is moving right along with it. 

It moves when she’s dancing with her friends, smiling and drunk on life and on cheap vodka as she sways her hips to the beat. 

It moves when Liz Allan comes back to the city for a job interview, when they meet up for lunch and commiserate over what life at Midtown was like and how much time has passed-- the specter of Peter and of Spider-Man hanging over them in a way that’s both so familiar and so foreign to her. 

It moves when Michelle comes across a mural of Spider-Man, still completely thrown off guard sometimes when she sees the words ‘Peter Parker’ attached to it. 

It moves when she scans her emails and gets invited out to events and for op-eds and memorials, some legitimate and most not, because it’s been a year and a half since Peter died and the implosion of the personal lives of every single person who ever knew him was still felt in new and horrifying ways. 

It’s time that she’s thinking about when she’s waiting for Johnny at the Ethiopian place on 87th that they used to meet up at since Johnny first joined their friend group-- an intentional effort spurred on by Peter but one that she was thankful for now.

_“I don’t really know him all that well.”_

_“That’s the whole point, MJ. He’s just-- he’s having a hard time, because of everything,” Peter had said, pulling her closer. “He hasn’t really talked to anyone about what’s happened--”_

_“So you think he’ll talk to me, a total stranger, about the hell he experienced in some nightmare dimension?”_

_“Honestly?” Peter said with a laugh, “Yeah, probably.”_

Michelle takes a sip of her water, feeling the cool breeze of the air around her as she people watches-- waiting for Johnny to show up. She was used to being the first one there, by virtue of knowing Johnny for as long as she did but also for how much often this would happen with Peter-- agreeing upon a time, giving herself an extra fifteen minutes and still being there before he was. 

Johnny was a little bit better about keeping to an appointment than Peter ever was, smirking to herself when she sees a familiar car drive up. 

“Show off,” Michelle mutters to herself as Johnny easily drives up, getting out of the car and locking it behind him-- seeing the eager and awed expression of the people around them when they notice not just the obscenely expensive car but the person who was driving it. Michelle shakes her head at how shameless Johnny is, putting on sunglasses even if it was almost dusk as he walks through the open patio and towards the table.

“And you _don’t_ like it when I compare you to Stark?” Michelle asks with a laugh, Johnny smiling at her as she easily slides into the chair across from her. 

“Our net worth is not even _remotely_ comparable, MJ,” Johnny says with a grin, lifting up his sunglasses to wink at her as she rolls her eyes. 

The waiter that comes up to take their order is completely star struck, stumbling over themselves in the same way people always do when Johnny’s so ostentatious. Johnny has such a familiarity about him that he’s able to set _him_ on ease-- joking with the waiter and eliciting a laugh as Michelle smiles.

Dinner itself is delicious, as it always is at their favorite place, a part of Michelle wondering just why people were still so surprised to see Johnny since they had such a long-standing dinner date there-- going at least once a month, if not more.

Then again, Michelle reasons as Johnny laughs at some joke she made before pulling in front of her apartment complex-- he’d been going out more and more on Four missions lately and she’d been swamped with finishing up last minute assignments while still applying for work at different studios. 

“You need me to walk you up? Dangerous out here,” Johnny asks jokingly, Michelle giving him a look as she grabs her bag and opens the door.

“Does that work on people? Like really, I want to know. Does that actually work?” Michelle asks with a snort, Johnny laughing as she steps out of the car.

She closes the door behind her, leaning over the open window as Johnny grins. 

“You’d be surprised. I’m told I’m quite the charmer.”

“Sure you are,” Michelle says with a smile, Johnny grinning at her as she says, “See you tomorrow? Ned’s place?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Johnny says with a smile that makes her feel light inside-- full from dinner and from spending time with one of the few people that she genuinely enjoyed being around.

By the time Michelle is showered, makeup off and scrolling through social media on her couch, she’s all but forgotten about the nervous waiter and the giggles of the people around her-- only to pause when she sees her Spider-Man as a trending topic.

She shouldn’t check it-- she’s feeling good today, today is a _good_ day-- but she does anyway, curious since there wasn’t anything that immediately came to mind for any anniversaries or any pop-up memorials that came up at any given moment. 

Michelle’s stomach drops when she taps the trending topic only to realize that they’re not talking about Spider-Man or Peter at all-- but about _her_ , her heart pounding in her chest when she sees some paparazzi shot of her and Johnny laughing outside at the restaurant. 

There’s a Buzzfeed article because of course there is, Michelle tapping on the link against her better judgement to avoid the scrutiny that she really should’ve accounted for-- only for her stomach to twist itself into knots when she sees just what the article is detailed.

Being the girlfriend of a dead person, a _young_ dead person, was difficult-- no one knows how to handle grief on a good day.

To be the girlfriend of a dead person when that person had been a superhero, when they’d been _Spider-Man_ and died fighting off a deranged man that was spending the rest of his mortal life in the Raft-- was something that no grief counselor or grief book could prepare you for.

It also couldn’t account for being close friends with another superhero, Michelle gritting her teeth as she reads the article that’s so clearly making more of her friendship with Johnny than what it is-- closing out of it only to glance through the tweets and see people drawing the same kind of conclusions.

Conclusions like Michelle Jones was an opportunist, a ‘cape chaser’ as they called them-- always looking to find a way into the world of superheroes. 

Conclusions like Michelle Jones was a grad student getting an art degree, pictures of her LinkedIn and links to her private social media accounts-- locked and private but still there for all to see-- clearly using Johnny Storm as a connection towards fame. 

Conclusions that Michelle didn’t even want to read, of racist pieces of trash talking about her and about Johnny and comparing them to the white heroes they preferred-- gritting her teeth before clicking off her phone.

Michelle takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly as she forces herself not to think of the words that they’re saying-- knowing they’re not true and caring very little about what some random trolls on the internet think of her. 

Yet there’s a whisper in the back of her mind, one that she’s been steadily avoiding for weeks as she launches herself up from the couch and grabs her sketchpad-- thinking of working her stress out in a way that might be productive towards her final product.

The assumption that she was _using_ Johnny was so completely absurd, just as the racist trash was, just as being called a _cape chaser_. 

She hated that Peter had been Spider-Man for years, part of the reason why they broke up so many times not being because she ever wanted him to stop-- she knew she couldn't’ ask him to stop anymore than he could ask her to stop creating her art-- but because of his prioritization, the lack of communication that plagued so much of their relationship in a way that she almost missed now-- if only because that was better than the alternative of knowing all her calls and texts will forever go unanswered. 

Michelle didn’t like superheroes in the abstract, her own complicated feelings about the Sokovia Accords much less the use of public funds when there were so many other avenues that could be used giving her more than enough material when she ever had the chance to discuss it with Sue or Stark or anyone else who was actually curious. 

But it’s not those assumptions that stop her or whisper at her, holding her sketch book in hand and thinking of the _other_ tweets and messages she saw-- the question that the end of the article had in mind for the hook.

Of how cute her and Johnny looked together. Of how often they saw them together, pictures of the two of them at dinner and at the Boleria exhibit. Of how close they’d been in the year since Peter died, and the question if their friendship meant something more. 

Michelle sighed. Of _course_ , it was something more. It was Johnny-- Johnny who had been there for her in a way that was so unique to who he is, the person who carried Peter’s body back to the medbay, the person who was there with her in the last moments they ever saw Peter alive. 

Johnny and her were bonded in a way that even her and Ned weren’t-- a connection that was unique and undeniable and didn’t deserve to be mixed in with whatever gossip that Buzzfeed and whoever else had to say. 

Yet it’s there, sitting like a weight in her chest as she glances through her sketchbook-- falling on the half-finished sketch of Peter once more. 

Michelle wasn’t any of those things that people wanted her to be.

But she was tied to Johnny, she _loved_ Johnny-- a certainty just as much as she knew Johnny loved her in a way that was unique to them. 

It hits her square in the chest, just as much as the reminder that she didn’t remember her last night with Peter was like had hit her.

She’s bothered that they think she’s a cape chaser or an opportunist, but she wasn’t bothered— not at first, not instinctively— by the assumption of her and Johnny being together. 

Michelle didn’t know what to think about that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did prem successfully bribe me into posting a chapter update early? 
> 
> yes. yes she did.


	4. Chapter 4

_ Michelle pants, running her nails up and down his back as he groans.  _

_ “Right there. Don’t stop, don’t-- don’t stop,” she pants out, feeling him grind into her with more purpose-- hitting an angle that’s perfect just as his movements drag across her clit. _

_ Michelle comes with a gasp, hearing him groan on top of her as their bodies move together-- riding out her orgasm as he pulses into her-- so hard and so fast that she thinks she blacks out for a second. _

_ When she finally comes down from her high, she opens her eyes-- laughing at feeling his hot breath against her neck. _

_ “You’re gonna squish me,” she says as he lifts his head up, Michelle looking up and seeing warm brown eyes staring back at her-- forehead slick with sweat as he grins. _

_ “Thought you liked that?” Johnny says with a smile, Michelle laughing until he kissed her.  _

Michelle wakes up with a gasp, heart pounding in her ears as she stares up at the ceiling. She instinctively claws at the empty space in the bed next to her, looking around her dark bedroom as her eyes adjust to the darkness.

There’s no one here and there hasn’t been-- Michelle’s heart still pounding as she works to control her breathing, pressing a hand over her chest as she stares and tries hard not to think of the throbbing ache she feels in the space between her legs.

It’s been a while since since she had a sex dream, but it’s the first time she’s had one about Johnny— guilt and desire flowing through her in equal measure as she squeezes her thighs together. 

She runs her hand across her chest, debating whether or not this was a good or bad idea or if there even was a moral attached to it before she just decides— bringing a hand down to her clit before closing her eyes.

She doesn’t want to think of Johnny so she thinks of Peter— only to feel conflicted in a way that could almost kill the mood that her first thought was to think of  _ Peter _ instead of Johnny.

Michelle works her hand, already close from how intense her dream was as she flips to her stomach— panting into her pillow as she grinds her clit against her fingers before slipping one inside her, working her hips in tandem with her hand.

It becomes less about  _ who _ and more the  _ what _ as she chases after release, heart pounding in her ears when she finally comes. 

Michelle slips her hand away— prone on her stomach and panting to the side of her pillow, now allowing the smallest hint of regret to flow through her that Johnny had been the impetus of this— that she’d tried to think of  _ Peter _ to try and prevent it, as if Johnny was some kind of replacement. 

Something he could never, ever be. Something he didn’t even want to be.

Michelle still somehow felt a little guilty. 

It’s annoying and it’s weird and it’s not something she’s mentally equipped to deal with, not when she’s riding high on endorphins that make her want to fall right back asleep.

She does, but Michelle isn’t sure whose face she dreams of when she falls asleep— vague flashes of a faceless man, strong arms wrapping around her and a warmth in her chest she couldn’t explain. 

* * *

“FUCK!” Michelle groans, yelling at the canvas in front of her.

Still frustratingly blank.

It was getting ridiculous now, how indecisive she was being about this. Michelle wasn’t an indecisive person by nature. She knew what she wanted and she went for it, the scared and quiet girl who was tired of causing a scene or letting herself be heard long gone.

Michelle knew what she wanted this piece to accomplish— for herself, for her advisor— but she still felt frustratingly blocked in how to pull it off.

The problem, Michelle thought, is that she couldn’t visualize it— held together entirely by feelings that conflicted with each other, feelings that had nothing to do with the impending deadline of a draft of her final project and everything to do with the second sex dream she’d had about Johnny. 

In a row.

_ This _ week.

Michelle was beyond feeling guilty and now just feeling frustrated— sexually or otherwise that she wasn’t able to push past this block. 

She growls again, wrenching herself away from the canvas and to her phone— scrolling through her text messages and pausing when she sees Johnny’s name right at the top.

It was stupid— so unbelievably stupid— to allow this to trip her up. Michelle debates just telling him, knowing that it would give Johnny a good laugh and if Michelle had any luck, would help her get over whatever it was in her mind that was fixating on what Johnny’s arms would feel like wrapped around her, how his breath would feel against her neck and how his body weight would feel like on top of her— slick with sweat and hot in more ways than one. 

It’s been a month since she’s had sex with anyone— scrolling past Johnny’s information and hovering over the last text thread she has with Brad, wondering if trying to rekindle something now would come across as desperate or has some latent interest— neither of which Michelle is particularly interested in showing.

She groans again at the phone, closing out of her texts and going back to the same app she found Brad on— swiping indiscriminately until scrolls through her messages on there with someone she’d already matched with, starting up a conversation and being as up front as possible that she’s not looking for anything more than someone to fuck.

And she does— fuck this dude that she thinks his name is either Andy or Randy— at his apartment on the Upper East Side, not the farthest she’s traveled for a booty call but one of the least disappointing as he bends over his cheap dresser and pulses his hips into her.

It’s hot and it’s quick and it’s just what she thought she needed until she’s in it— closing her eyes and finding herself imagining someone else grabbing her tightly by the hips, someone else panting hard and fast as he moved.

It’s not Peter but Michelle almost wishes it was— thinking there had to be something wrong with her to prefer to imagine her dead boyfriend than her dead boyfriend’s best friend— one of them at least— debating how far would be too far in talking about this with Ned when Randy-Andy-whatever finishes inside the condom— sloppily reaching a hand down to try and finish her off before Michelle just does it for him.

She leaves, legs a little sore from the exertion of holding herself up, taking out her phone and calling Ned before she can talk herself out of it.

“Hello?”

“How close are we, Leeds?” She asks as she steps out of Randy-Andy-whatever’s apartment, a cold rush of air blowing in her face as she grips her phone tighter.

“What do you need?” Ned asks, the same tone he takes when Michelle needs help with her wifi — just exasperated enough to make her laugh. 

“Not tech support so calm down,” she says, smiling as Ned laughs on the other line, “but I need to talk to somebody about something and I don’t know if you’ll be able to handle it.”

“Okay…” Ned says, sounding that same brand of worried and curious that Ned Leeds always sounds like before Michelle launches into a plan. It was the same tone he took when Michelle not so subtly cornered him about Peter being Spider-Man when they were in high school even if Ned-- loyal to the end-- refused to acknowledge it. It was the same tone he took when he was explaining the mechanics of what it meant to be a FOS, in the most literal sense the very first time Michelle listened in when Peter went on a patrol only to immediately decide that it was  _ not _ something she wanted to be a part of. It was the same tone he took when Peter died and Michelle wanted to meet up at he and Johnny’s old apartment, one final goodbye with the three of them in a way that was grossly sentimental but would’ve been what Peter would’ve wanted. 

“Let’s say hypothetically,” Michelle begins, hearing Ned laugh on the other side of the line, “that you have a friend.”

“Only one?”

“Leeds.”

Ned laughs, Michelle smiling despite herself as she walks towards the subway. “Okay, okay. I have a friend.”

“And this friend is attractive--”

“Naturally.”

Michelle debates with herself for a moment before rushing forward, knowing that she’s in sight of the subway stop but also having very little patience for trying to work her away around describing this as she asks, “How weird is it to have a sex dream about them?”

Ned’s immediate silence on the other end is exactly what she feared, her stomach twisting into knots before he finally says, “Hypothetically? Probably not all that weird.”

“What?” Michelle asks, a group of tourists passing by and making a fool of themselves as she frowns-- only to duck and keep walking when she sees one of them have a Spider-Man backpack. The chances of them recognizing her as the girlfriend of a dead superhero wasn’t likely.

But it was never zero. Michelle kept walking past the subway stop and towards another as Ned continued.

“I’m saying it’s not all that weird? If you’re attracted to them--”

“I didn’t say I was attracted to them,” Michelle cuts in as she crosses the street, “just that they’re attractive.”

“I thought we were still talking in hypotheticals,” Ned says casually, Michelle laughing as she steps back onto the sidewalk.

“Fuck you.”

“Oh so you had a sex dream about  _ me _ ?” Ned asks, Michelle rolling her eyes as Ned laughs, “I, for one, am flattered.” 

“Ned, I’m serious,” Michelle says, feeling an anxious twist in her gut, “does it mean something?” 

Ned has mercy on her or maybe is just that good of a friend because he laughs as Michelle walks with a little more purpose to the subway stop as he says, “Assuming we’re moving beyond talking about hypotheticals, I mean… no? It’s a dream, MJ. A sex dream is still just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Michelle chews on that for a second, already anticipating the question that she already knows he’s going to ask.

“Unless you want it to?”

Michelle bites her lip, eyes on the subway stop that’ll take her back to her apartment, sure of the answer she  _ wants _ to be able to give and yet more unsure of the answer she actually has. 

* * *

Michelle is at her mom’s house, the two of them watching some romantic comedy on the tv while her father cooks. She can hear him humming some song in the background, a faint smile on her lips at the feeling of warmth and of comfort-- of growing up in a home that made her feel safe even if the world outside didn’t. 

Michelle didn’t have a lot of luck getting close to people because anyone she tried just couldn’t compare to the family she already had. What was the point, Michelle had reasoned when she was young, in getting to know people when they would always disappoint-- when they would always fail to  _ be _ there as much as her parents or her little sister would be.

She’s just about to ask what time Lizzie was getting home from practice, now that she was in high school herself and too cool to hang out with Michelle when her mom asks, “How’s your project coming along?”

Michelle glances up, seeing her mom on her phone-- scrolling through Pinterest or social media or whatever it is that mom’s do on their phones-- before Michelle sighs, looking down into her cup of tea. 

“It’s going I guess,” Michelle says glumly, avoiding the look that she knows her mom is giving her, “I can’t get it right.”

“What’s holding you back?” Her mom asks as if it were just that simple, though Michelle knows if she were to really dive into it that her mom would absolutely see it as such. 

There wasn’t anything  _ holding _ her back, even if the deadline for when she needed to turn in the final product was getting closer and closer. Her advisor had already the not so subtle suggestion that she was getting too close to the deadline to continue to push this off. 

“I know you’re good for it,” her advisor had said to her during their meeting last week, not even bothering to finish the statement because of the look she gave her-- a look that Michelle knows her own mother is giving to her with the subconscious realization that maybe  _ that’s _ why she liked her advisor so much to begin with.

Michelle was procrastinating for no good reason. She wasn’t nearly as worried as the rest of her classmates were about making their final piece  _ “represent them _ ” or anything else horrifically cliché. She was stressed sure, in the same way anyone who was approaching the end of their education was stressed. But Michelle also had a good plan for after graduation, something not everyone could say with confidence. 

She had a gig lined up with a gallery that she’d interned with several summers ago, one she was especially glad for because now with her name being out there in a way she had never anticipated, she could have some confidence that they actually wanted  _ her _ and not some tie to Peter or Spider-Man. Stark had said on more than one occasion that he would be willing to pull some strings but Michelle wasn’t interested in Tony’s connections, just as she hadn’t been interested in the Avengers when Peter was alive. 

Working at the gallery would be good for her, especially since it would give her time to be within the art world while still creating pieces and running classes-- give her the chance to decide if she wanted to teach art at the college level. Her heart wanted to teach art at the community college but her rent said she needed something a bit more lucrative. 

Even without the existential crisis of what she wanted to do after graduation hanging over her, Michelle still struggled with her final project-- if only because she was riddled with an indecision that was so unlike her. 

She could see it so clearly in her mind what she wanted to accomplish but could not get herself to get there, something that bothered her in so much as it prevented her from just being done with it-- to be done with this phase of her life and move onto the next one.

“I don’t know,” Michelle says to her mom, finally looking up to see an expression that feels eerily similar-- having been on the receiving end of it for most of her life and to now realize with stunning clarity that it’s a look that she’s no doubt given to others as she shrugs, “But I’ll figure it out.”

“You will,” her mom says with that same kind of finality that she always does. Not an edict or any kind of proclamation but a sense of certainty, a reminder of how much of a rock her mother was in her life and how many nights they spent in this very living room-- her mother holding her close and letting her cry into her nightgown in the weeks after Peter died, exhausted from her grief and exhausted from the public’s prying eyes and their obsessive need to know everything about her, about Peter, and about the life they shared together. 

She looks as if she’s going to say something more when her phone buzzes, Michelle’s own phone going off at the same time. There’s a spike of fear in her chest at that, instantly thrown back to the same kind of terror that would grip her when her phone would alert her about issues with Spider-Man when she glances down and sees that it’s a text from Johnny-- smirking at it as she reads the message.

**[8:39pm] Fire Hazard** : On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it to fight with ur sister’s ex? 

Michelle snorts, typing out a quick reply.

**[8:39pm] MJ:** i thought no one talks about that thing she had with Tony

Michelle waits for the text bubbles to pop up but they don’t, Michelle clicking her phone off when her mom says, “That Johnny Storm knows how to make an entrance.”

“What?” Michelle asks, wondering for a brief second if her mom had somehow had access to her text messages-- thinking that if her and Tony Stark talked as much as they threatened that they did that this wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of possibility-- only for her mom to put her phone down and grab the remote, changing the channel to the local news.

Michelle looks to the screen and then sees it, Johnny Storm-- and the rest of the Four-- flying about and fighting with an actual tentacle monster that was threatening to climb on top of the Statue of Liberty.

The two of them watch in silence, Michelle’s eyes tracking the camera that followed around Sue fly forward— her braids pulled up into a bun high on her head as she tries to evade the water, working with Reed to try and detach this monster looking thing.

Michelle has no idea where Ben is but she can see Johnny flying about, only for her phone to buzz again and her eyes to widen when she sees it’s Johnny again.

**[8:41pm] Fire Hazard** : nah the other one. The Aquaman rip off.

Michelle isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or yell that Johnny is actually texting her while fighting off some tentacle monster, wildly curious now since she didn’t know Sue had ever dated a sea monster or if she just missed something in translation when her mom’s voice rings out. 

“Do you need to go?”

Michelle looks up from her phone and back to her mother, frowning in confusion from the expectant look on her face.

“What?”

Her mom nods towards the tv and then looks pointedly at her phone. “I’m assuming that’s Johnny. Do you need to go? Get your laptop and do,” she waves a hand in the air, “whatever it is they do?”

Michelle blinks, at a loss for words when her mother says, “I have those alerts on my phone now, for whenever they get up to things.”

“They…”

“That Johnny Storm,” her mother says, as if that made all the sense in the world. Michelle just stares, only for understanding to flood through her when her mom says, “I didn’t when— I didn’t before.”

Michelle clamps her lips together, seeing a shade of guilt pass over her mother’s features— guilt she shouldn’t feel since Michelle had kept the truth about Peter being Spider-Man for her until they’d been in college as her mom says, “I don’t want to miss it now.”

“I don’t have to go anywhere,” Michelle says, settling back on the couch, “they’re a team. They have— they can figure it out.”

Michelle’s mom accepts that, turning back to the tv as Michelle herself does the same— only to belatedly realize the insinuation her mother had given without her even noticing. 

She shouldn’t be surprised— her mother was observant— but her own mother had Johnny as someone of personal importance to her, someone that she even assumed that Michelle would want to watch out for in a way that didn’t feel as friendly as she belatedly wanted to claim it did.

But what gets her— what not quite bothers her but gives her pause— is that Michelle hadn’t even thought to correct her or question it, had worked right along with her in the assumption that Johnny was important enough to her to warrant that kind of worry.

Michelle chews the inside of her cheek, watching the Four fight off the monster on the tv, unsure of what to make of that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story keeps getting longer but I think we're finally set at eight chapters.
> 
> do not look at me.


	5. Chapter 5

Michelle is eating popcorn in Ned and Johnny’s living room, the shower running as Johnny sings some horrible pop song completely out of tune-- intentionally since Michelle knows he can sing-- when Ned says, “So.”

She glances at him, Ned taking a sip of his beer before sighing and saying, “Are we gonna talk about this?”

“Talk about what?” Michelle asks, mostly to see if she can try and avoid the conversation-- very much _not_ wanting to talk about it even if she knows that if she does that it’ll just make Ned want to pursue the conversation topic further. 

Ned was a great friend, one of her absolute best friends. He respected her boundaries, hung out with her outside of Peter when he was alive and was just as much her friend because he was _her_ friend now that Peter was dead. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders sometimes, a burden that Michelle even wonders if _Peter_ really recognized because of how all-consuming Spider-Man had been for the three of them.

The fact that the two of them had somehow went from a quartet of two superhero friends down to one wasn’t lost on her, just as much as it wasn’t lost on the fact that for as much as Ned wouldn’t force her to talk about anything that she really didn’t want to that _this_ was a topic that she couldn’t avoid forever.

“You know what,” Ned says quickly, seemingly understanding that the time of their conversation was contingent upon the length of time that Johnny was in the shower. “Have you talked to him?”

“ _No_ and I’m not going to,” Michelle says incredulously, thanking anyone out in the universe that would listen that she can hear the water shut off, “it’s weird and some weird things don’t have to be shared.” 

“It’s only weird if you make it weird,” Ned says in that frustratingly calm way he always does, Johnny’s off-key singing getting somehow even louder now that the water is off and he’s no doubt getting ready. The idea of a naked Johnny Storm in the other room makes Michelle even more uncomfortable with the topic at end, not least of which because she’s actively trying to avoid thinking of him in any other capacity than her friend-- one of her best friends. One of her _dead boyfriend’s_ best friends at that. 

“It’s going to be weird and I stopped having them so it doesn’t matter anyway.” 

Her _other_ best friend stares at her like she’s an idiot, frowning at her as he says, “MJ…”

“Drop it, please,” Michelle says just as Johnny throws the door open, ending on a high note-- of his song, not the conversation-- as he extends his hands out.

It was so obnoxious, so out there and yet so perfectly him-- one of the many things that Michelle really liked about him, especially for how much of a contrast that he was to Peter.

 _Stop that_ , she thinks and immediately hates herself for-- not wanting to compare the two when they were both so inherently different, when she didn’t _want_ to try and compare Peter and Johnny not just because it feels like she’s diminishing what Peter’s place in her life had been much less the relationship she has with Johnny, but because to compare them in this way would assume that Johnny _was_ as important to her as Peter had been.

He wasn’t, he isn’t, he couldn't be-- the love that she had for Peter, the years of being friends and then back and forth being something that no one could ever compare to and or even comprehend. 

And yet, there was Johnny-- who was always there with her, always there _for_ her, a friendship and a connection that was so different from the one that she had with anyone else in her life-- but because of how they were connected from Peter and outside of it. 

It’s enough to cause her insides to twist around, a fear that she hadn’t even realized that she had of how her feelings for Johnny-- feeling she isn’t she wants to have but yet can’t deny that she does-- would change things between them if she ever acted on them, much less the ever present worry of what people would think.

Michelle, as a rule, didn’t give a fuck what people thought. But that was a much easier proclamation to have when it revolved solely around the Midtown lunch crowd rather than the entirety of the internet. 

“Well?” He asks, Michelle looking over to him and swallowing down the uncomfortable feeling in her throat. “What’d you think?”

“Not your best work,” Ned says as if he and her weren’t in a battle of wits only seconds before, thankful once again for Ned Leeds and for getting the chance to be in his life as Johnny looks offended.

“Not my-- not my best _work_? I was giving you tenor, I was giving you alto. I even went down to baritone, did you hear me?”

Ned shrugs as Johnny comes over to his side of the couch, plopping down till he’s on the other side of Ned as he says, “I’m saying I’ve heard you do better.”

“Ouch Leeds, you’re a tough crowd,” Johnny says with a smile, winking at him before glancing over to Michelle. “How about you?”

“Huh?” Michelle asks, Ned looking at her out of the corner of his eye with a smirk on his face as Johnny smiles at her. “What’d you think?”

Michelle finally comes to grips with herself, smiling in a way that she knows isn’t genuine as she says, “I’m with Leeds on this one. You’re losing your touch, J.”

Something shifts across Johnny’s eyes, a horrifying moment for Michelle to think that she’s actually being seen for hiding something-- something that she can see _so clearly_ in his eyes before he also decides to brush past it for now, pursing his lips as he clicks his tongue and says, “You guys are just jealous.”

“That we can’t carry a tune? Yeah, definitely,” Ned deadpans in a way that elicits a real laugh out of Michelle, not missing the way that Johnny smiles at that even if it causes something in her stomach to flip.

“I’ll have you know that I was considered to be a judge on _American Idol_ like four times and I told them no.”

“That show is still _on_?” Michelle asks, feeling whatever tension she had thought was building slowly start to dissipate and get back to the familiarity of how they usually interact as Johnny laughs.

“No,” he says with a grin, Michelle smiling a bit more genuinely at him as he says, “Probably cause I kept telling him no.”

Michelle and Ned groan at his arrogance, even if it’s in good fun-- Ned changing the subject to some other reality show that he and Johnny had been binge watching. 

It’s good, it’s comfortable-- it’s a reminder for Michelle that she hadn’t even realized that she needed that what they had, the three of them, was _real_. 

The conversation shifts, just as the three of them do-- even if the feelings she isn’t sure she wants herself to have still hang out in the back of her head, only further spurred on when she catches Johnny staring at her halfway through the night.

Curious, concerned, like he wants to talk to her-- like he _knows_ she’s hiding something. 

Michelle doesn’t want to think about that.

* * *

Michelle is staring at her canvas again. 

It isn’t blank, not this time around. She’d done and then redone enough drafts in her sketchbook to see what it is that she wants to put on the canvas. 

The deadline is technically next week, close enough that ever her advisor was starting to get a little _pushy_ for lack of a better term. Not necessarily because she doubted Michelle-- her advisor being one of those people she knows would go to bat for her if necessary since she did exactly that, coming in and sitting in on a class after a photographer had snuck in a month after Peter died-- but rather because of pressure from the administration to actually have something to show. 

“I know you’re almost there,” she’d said, even without having seen the canvas but trusting that Michelle would pull through, “just get to it.”

“I will,” Michelle had said through that last meeting, confident in a way she probably shouldn’t have been, she thinks as she stares at the canvas.

The primer is done and the base is ready. She’s outlined what she’s needed, the sketch and the tracing is there-- just as the tea she’s made that’s now growing cold is sitting across from her. 

Michelle quirks her lips when she looks at the mug and for how far it is away from the canvas, thinking of all the times she’d almost dipped her paint into it… of all the times she _had_ dipped her paint into it.

_“EUGH. This is-- what the hell is this?”_

_“Why are you drinking paint water?” Michelle asked._

_“I thought it was coffee!” Peter sputtered, making a face and a mess and all the things that Michelle loved about him._

_“Get out of here,” she said playfully, shoving him and the paint mug away. “And get me a new mug.”_

Michelle smiled at the memory, the twinge she feels in her heart not so much bitter but sweet. 

She’s a month from graduation, two months before she starts her job-- but four months away from the anniversary-- almost two years since Peter died. 

It hurt, Michelle long made peace with herself that it always would-- less afraid now that she _wouldn’t_ feel that hurt as time continued to crawl forward for the ever present reality that her loss was just _there_.

It ebbed and it flowed and she had more good days than bad lately, wondering if the reason everyone always claimed that time healed all wounds wasn’t because time away from the point that forever changed your life _actually_ healed anything but rather gave you perspective-- an understanding that it was just another thing you would have to live with.

When Michelle was thirteen, she broke her arm after having been in a small car accident-- a small scar right on the inside of her wrist that Peter used to kiss because of how much it reminded him of a lightning bolt. 

She could still remember the pain of breaking her arm-- even if she couldn't remember the details of the hospital visit or how long she was in a cast. But the pain, the memory of the pain was still there, just as the physical scar of what had happened was always there on her body.

She couldn’t forget about it, it was always right there-- ready for her to see when she looked down. 

Grief, she found, was similar in concept-- the hole that Peter left in her left being something that could never be filled. 

And yet, here she was-- living, moving forward as time carried her forward, learning how to live within it and around it just as she had lived with her broken arm. 

Michelle lets out a huff, staring at the canvas in front of her-- a wisp of a thought floating around her mind. She’d already known what she wanted to do even if she couldn’t push herself to do it just yet. 

She hadn’t wanted to get out of bed after the funeral. But she did.

She hadn’t wanted to face the crowds of people-- literally and figuratively-- in the weeks and months after Peter died. But she did.

She didn't want to forget Peter, to never feel as if she was losing him in any other way than she already had. It was the conflict of wanting desperately to leave the city after graduation but knowing that she couldn’t because New York was home and that it was filled with ghosts but also memories. It was the conflict of living her life long after Peter had gone, of having good sex, bad sex, _any_ kind of sex with strangers-- to feel connected, to feel something, to feel as if she _could_ again only to realize as time plowed on that she was having sex less because she wanted to feel but because she _wanted_ to. It was the conflict of knowing her feelings for Johnny were starting to grow beyond being friendly, that there was something there in her mind and in her heart that had long since taken root-- the doubt that maybe she was blurring the lines between a sense of familiarity and of love being misrepresented into romantic feelings, only for them to persist. 

It was conflict upon conflict upon conflict.

And then it clicked-- the recognition that she wouldn’t ever be able to reconcile some of these things no matter what or who or where she goes next. 

Michelle smiles and picks up her brush.

She begins to paint.

* * *

“What about this one?”

Michelle glances over to May, holding back the laugh she so desperately wants to give as May brings up a figurine that looks like it was made in the 70s and had lived a rough life the past few decades.

Before Michelle can answer, May sees her face-- sighing as she says, “I don’t know why I thought today would be a good run when everyone said everything’s been picked clean. Sorry, I know we should’ve gotten out here earlier.”

“It’s fine, May,” Michelle says because it is, because she really didn’t have any plans on finding anything good at this particular flea market. She cared more about the chance to hang out with May, something that she’d already had to cancel twice because of a meeting with her advisor about discussing her final piece and then another assignment she had completely forgotten about because of focusing on her final piece.

The last two weeks had felt like she was stuck in an endless of eat, sleep, paint and repeat but now it was done-- a feeling of accomplishment even if she knows the rest is before her, the judgement of her piece even if her advisor hated that she called it that.

Michelle wasn’t worried, not just because she felt good about it but because the worst part of it was over-- half the battle being in the _doing_ and now that it was finished, there wasn’t a lot she had to stress about. 

Getting to waste time with May, going to one flea market only to find that it was closed, having problems in the subway that prevented them from getting to this flea market and now looking through the discarded pieces that everyone else hadn’t wanted-- all of it was fine because it just gave her a day to spend time with a woman who in another life, would’ve been her mother-in-law. 

That future is gone but May’s love and influence would always be a part of her life, something she was certain of when Peter was lowered into the ground and something she’s still sure of now as she smiles. 

“There’s some more stuff on the other side maybe? People are heading there at least,” Michelle says, May smirking at her before setting the figurine down. 

“That or it’s the taco truck that’s just showed up,” May says, nodding in that direction as Michelle turns and sees what she had missed before-- a taco truck that reminds her that in all of this running around, neither of them had stopped by to eat something. 

“You ready to call it?” May asks, Michelle laughing as the two of them start to walk towards the taco truck-- May looping her arm with Michelle’s as they walk together. 

It was a good day, Michelle loved the good days-- even if it was still technically a failure of what they planned to happen. 

Michelle walks arm in arm with May-- to the food truck, to new beginnings, to finding joy even in the failures.

It’s all they could ever do anyway. 

* * *

“So it _wasn’t_ a fish monster?” Michelle asks as Johnny laughs, the two of them hanging out on the couch of her apartment.

“No she dated the guy who _controlled_ the fish monster,” Johnny said cheerfully, as if he didn’t have his own share of terrible exes to complain about, “and I will never let her live it down.”

“Sure you will,” Michelle says with a grin, “unless you want her to start posting screencaps of your twitter DMs.” 

“How would she even get into-- wait. Does she have access? MJ, I need you tell me and I need you tell me now,” Johnny says, his smile falling with how serious he looks. It only serves to make Michelle laugh as Johnny starts to panic, muttering to himself as he starts frantically messing around with his phone-- presumably to change his password.

“I’m gonna get another one, you want one?”

“Nah,” Johnny says as Michelle goes to stand, grabbing his now empty beer bottle, “I gotta fly home tonight. Or fly out. I don’t know. Reed’s being weird.”

“Weird how?” Michelle asks as she moves towards the kitchen, disposing of the bottles as Johnny says, “You know how he gets.”

“I don’t actually, unlike everyone else in your life, I don’t actually care about the Four as a business.” 

“I thought you cared about the spending that we’re accumulating as a burden on taxpayers,” Johnny says cheekily, Michelle rolling her eyes as she opens up the fridge.

“Someday you’re gonna get over that,” she says lightly, thinking better of getting another beer when she realizes she’s almost out. She doesn’t plan on going out to the grocery store for another week and should probably conserve, only to hear Johnny whistle from the other room.

“Wow, is it finished?”

Michelle closes the fridge and walks back into the living room where Johnny is now standing-- gesturing towards her final project and laughing that he had missed it, only to remember that he came in from the door this time around and then immediately ran to the bathroom. 

“It is,” Michelle says with more than a little pride, holding her tongue and waiting to describe it as Johnny took it in. 

She’s been to enough art exhibits with him to know that he has his own opinions about art-- deeply feeling a connection to pieces that didn’t always connect in the same way she did but that Michelle was always interested in hearing nonetheless.

She hadn’t made a big habit of telling people that she was done with her final project, nor had she wanted to share it-- less because of feeling nervous but because she wanted to wait until the gallery, to make it easier for everyone to see it all at once. 

Yet Johnny studying it now twists her stomach into good knots, finding that she hadn’t realized how much she wanted to hear what he thought until he was studying it-- pursing his lips and folding his arms across his chest in the same way he always did when he was thinking seriously about something.

“Wow,” he says, almost sounding a little breathless as his eyes rove over the canvas. “It’s incredible, MJ. You’re-- you’re incredible.”

Michelle walks closer to him until she’s right beside him, facing it as she looks at her project with him.

It’s a take on the self-portrait and the skyline all at once, not a picture of Michelle staring back into the audience but looking out into the city-- the moon serving as the beacon of light in the right hand corner with swirls and ripples in muted shades of purple, back and blue. 

The city itself is dark, like how it looks at night from her rooftop, Michelle herself being represented by a lone woman looking out into the city with only her back and her hair being centered in the middle of the canvas.

But the part that Michelle was most proud of, the part that she was most interested in hearing what people-- especially Johnny-- had to say, was the ripples and streams of gold. 

The city, rather than be illuminated by city lights, was interlaced with golds and yellow flecks-- streaking out from the moon and casting “shadows” across the city. The city itself looks almost as if it’s broken, were it not for the lines and streams of gold and yellow intertwined with it-- from the bottom of the page and crawling it’s way to the woman centered in the canvas. 

“Wow,” Johnny says again, his voice a touch softer as Michelle looks over to him-- only to see that he’s staring at her with an unreadable expression on her face. 

She wants to ask what his interpretation is or if he understands, only to feel so immensely _seen_ by the look in his eyes-- the air in her lungs feeling like it’s been sucked out of her lungs as they stare at each other.

There’s something so intensely vulnerable about showing people art, something that Michelle actively tried not to think about. But she hadn’t realized until this moment how personal _this_ piece felt, how personal it felt to have Johnny be here with her alone for the first time in what feels like weeks even if it couldn’t possibly be the case. 

For all the worry that she had a few weeks ago about her sex dreams and her feelings about Johnny, she’d been too busy to think about it-- just as Johnny himself had been dipping in and out of the city for missions with the Four and for whatever else SHIELD had them involved. 

Yet here he is, in her apartment and the two of them alone-- Michelle feeling like sweat is collecting in the back of her neck as they stare at each other-- only for heart to feel like it’s gonna beat in double time when Johnny’s expression shifts, the air growing thin as his eyes dart down to her lips. 

Johnny’s entire superpower involves heat and yet he’s not the source of the electricity that’s flowing between them, Michelle feeling breathless as he starts to lean in, finding herself leaning forward too-- not like magnets but ships passing each other in the night, getting closer and closer as her mind screams at her. 

Only for the two of them to startle when Johnny’s phone starts to ring, backing away from each other and the mood lifting just as quickly as it settled when Johnny turns to it-- walking back to the couch and frowning.

“Duty calls,” he says, almost sounding disappointed-- only to glance up at Michelle and look unsure. 

They stare at each other for a beat, Michelle at a complete loss for what she could say-- for how she could even begin to try and describe what she almost attempted, much less the knowledge that whatever wavelength she’d been on-- Johnny had clearly been right there with her.

“I better go,” he says, not moving as he does.

“Yeah. Sue’ll be pissed,” Michelle says, holding his gaze.

“Yeah.” 

They stare at each other still, Michelle still feeling her heart race until Johnny’s phone rings again-- louder this time around as he laughs.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” he says as he answers, motioning towards Michelle’s window as she waves him off. 

“It’s beautiful,” Johnny says with a smile, before he leaves-- jumping out of the window and seeing a flash of fire fly off into the sky. 

When he does, Michelle finally feels like she can breathe-- pressing a hand against her chest.

Her heart is pounding so much that it feels like it’s going to beat out of her chest, grounding herself in the moment and reckoning with the shock to her system that the feelings she hadn’t even had the time to avoid-- feelings that she had thought would be unrequited and wrong and completely inappropriate-- clearly weren’t from the look in Johnny’s eyes. 

Michelle takes a deep breath, swallowing down the lump in her throat as she tries to make sense of what just happened. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't mention the increased chapter count if you won't.


	6. Chapter 6

“You doing okay, kid?”

“Hm?” Michelle asks, nursing the same drink that her advisor had given her at the start of the night. She didn’t particularly want to drink but it was seen as bad form to have nothing in her hands, currently leaning against a corner of the gallery that the final projects of her class were all being displayed in. 

There were a ton of people here, enough to blend into the crowd-- even if there was a part of her that was still slightly worried and mostly annoyed that there might be a reporter here who would try and make her piece into another critical hot take of the voyeurism of the superhero industry by proxy of criticizing her piece-- something that would be more ironic if any of them had an ounce of self-awareness.

“I’m good, it’s just a lot,” Michelle says as she smiles at Tony, watching as he squints at her like he doesn’t believe her. He should, Michelle had made it a point of being upfront and honest with the man since the very first day that she ever met him-- making it clear that she didn’t agree with his past nor the fact that all he really did was change from selling weapons to _becoming_ a weapon, a free agent without accountability or any kind of recompense.

If she didn’t know him so well by now, she’d be a little surprised at how much he still wanted to be around her-- though from what she’s seen of him and how interacted with Pepper, May and even Morgan told her all that she needed to in how much Tony Stark appreciated those who didn’t just worship the ground he walked on. 

“Sure, but that’s not what I’m asking,” Tony says, Michelle furrowing her eyebrows at him as he continues, “I’m asking if you’re doing okay.”

“Because…” Michelle trails off, only for it to feel like a kick in the gut when Tony says, “I saw the news about the Four.”

Michelle chews the inside of her cheek, hating how terribly obvious it is to anyone how much Johnny and the rest of them’s latest battle affected her-- hoping that it was only obvious in so much as she _cared_ about Johnny and not for how deep and how _different_ that care had ended up becoming. 

Some guy in Latveria was making a huge stink, enough that it caused this relatively “normal” mission to turn into something much bigger than they had anticipated. They’d come home, safely it seemed, but it was a close enough call that it made Michelle think twice about herself-- to wonder if she was some kind of masochist to only love people who put themselves in harm’s way. 

Because she did-- love Johnny-- even if the nuances of that love was beginning to unfold and unravel in ways that she couldn’t have ever planned or anticipated. 

“I think he’d be here, if he could,” Tony says, adjusting his sunglasses that only he could wear while being inside.

“Yeah, he texted,” Michelle replies, swirling around the liquid still full within her glass, “thought it’d be better to sit it out since there might be some news around.”

“Safe bet,” Tony says carefully, Michelle wondering not for the first time how it must feel to live a life completely in the public eye. Her own brush with fame, a fame she never asked for and never wanted, was exhausting enough but people like Tony, like Johnny and Sue and Reed and Ben-- they’d all willingly signed up for it by virtue of having their powers. 

Peter hadn’t ever wanted that life for himself and it seemed wrong, in a way, for his identity to be outed now that he was dead. 

Before Michelle can think anymore about that, Tony clears his throat and says, “Just wanted to check in on. You should be out there, mingling.”

“I’m mingling,” Michelle says with a smile, nodding in the direction of where Pepper and Morgan were currently, “Shouldn’t you be taking photo ops or something?”

“Or something. Considering making an investment. You think the artists will sell?” Tony asks with a grin, Michelle smirking as she rolls her eyes.

“Please. They’d probably shit their pants to know you _looked_ at their work,” she says, Tony adjusting his glasses.

“Now _that_ would be something wouldn’t it?” He extends an arm out to her, an invitation-- an offering to get back out there.

Michelle smiles, loops her arms with him and walks out the center of the gallery-- ignoring the stares as they walk together. 

It’s a feeling Michelle is starting to get used to. 

  
  


* * *

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Johnny says, waving a hand in the air as he settles on the couch. He looks fine and from what Michelle knows of Sue that if he was actually in any kind of pain that he wouldn’t be allowed outside of the Baxter Building.

But he was insistent, if only as an apology for missing her final project gallery— an apology that was unnecessary in Michelle’s eyes as he says, “Though I’m gonna starve before Ned finally gets here. Where is he?”

“Good question,” she mutters, going over to the kitchen to grab a drink as she slips her phone out of her pocket to check on both Ned and the pizza he was supposed to be bringing. She had rushed home from a meeting with her future boss, hadn’t even had the chance to change from the outfit she’d worn for the staff pictures they were insistent on taking as she types out a message. 

**[6:16PM] MJ:** where are you?

Michelle puts her phone back in her pocket as she opens up one of the hard lemonade’s Johnny brought over, watching the little text bubbles light up only to frown when Ned’s message comes in.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she mutters, Johnny calling out, “What happened? Is he okay?”

 _He won’t be_ as Michelle sets the lemonade down and grabs her phone, making sure she’s reading his text message right. 

**[6:16PM: Nedward]** oh shit sry totally forgot I have a date tonight. I’ll pay for the pizza just venmo me

 **[6:16PM: MJ]** date with who??? Leeds don’t bullshit me. 

“I don’t know,” Michelle says, taking a sip of her lemonade and having a feeling deep in her gut that Ned Leeds may or may not have a date but that it was complete and total bullshit that he’d forgotten that her and Johnny were supposed to be meeting up at her apartment. 

**[6:17PM] MJ** : Ned I’m serious 

She taps her fingers against the countertop, waiting for Ned to respond only for her frown to deepen when she reads his next few messages.

 **[6:17PM] Nedward:** so am I

 **[6:17PM] Nedward:** sorry MJ I really do have a date. Remember Milo? From work? Heading into the movie right now 

**[6:18PM] Nedward** : guess you and Johnny have to actually talk to each other now huh?

Michelle’s never felt more murderous rage than she does in that moment, going to call Ned only for it to go straight to voicemail.

It’s aggravating and annoying and yet totally _Ned_ to do something like this— vaguely remembering now that he did mention a guy at his work that he’d been flirting with but wondering at how _convenient_ it was that the night Ned decided to ask him out was the same night the three of them were supposed to hang out at her place.

Convenient or planned, it is what it is now.

Michelle sighs, grabbing her phone and the lemonade as she walks back to the living room and says, “Ned’s ditching us for dick.”

“Hell yeah,” Johnny says, completely unperturbed as he moves to start the movie. “Good for him.”

“You know that means our pizza hasn’t even been ordered yet,” Michelle says, nudging for him to move his legs so she can sit down. Johnny does, the movie playing as he shrugs.

“Sal’s is quick and delivers.”

Michelle snorts, pulling up her phone and starting the process of ordering— making good on her promise to venmo Ned for the amount and adding on some cheesy breadsticks and extra marinara for good measure. 

“Food should be here in… twenty minutes?” Michelle says with a groan, putting her phone back on the couch as Johnny laughs.

“It’ll be fine,” he says, with the same kind of ease he always does. Michelle glances over to him and sees the easy going smile on his face as he continues, “If I die of hunger, I’m blaming you.”

“ _Me?_ Blame Ned for ditching us,” Michelle says, Johnny just laughing as she settles further into the couch.

“Nah, Ned’s a good dude. If he ditched, he had a reason.”

“Okay,” Michelle says sarcastically, only to clamp her lips shut when Johnny says, “Knowing him, he probably wants us to talk.”

Michelle immediately goes silent, quiet and scared for a moment that Ned had said something to him even if she knew Ned well enough to know he never would betray her trust like that when Johnny says, “I told him that I was— that I felt bad, about missing your gallery.”

“You don’t have to—“

“I wanted to go,” Johnny says, looking sincere as Michelle locks eyes with him. “I just knew it would be a big deal, bigger than what you all were doing and I didn’t—“

“It’s really not a problem, J,” Michelle says, only for Johnny to shake his head.

“Maybe not but I— I don’t know,” Johnny averts his eyes, Michelle feeling his discomfort from where she’s sitting when he says, “I didn’t want to let you down.”

Michelle wants to argue that he didn’t only for it to hit her for why he was so worried— the look on his face now eerily reminiscent to what it had been the first New Year’s Eve after Peter died, when Johnny had been drunk out of his mind and flying around the city, when Michelle had called Tony to check on him and that when Johnny finally came back home she was there to greet him— a twinge in her chest at the realization that this thing had been building between them for far longer than she had even wanted to admit. 

“You didn’t let me down,” Michelle says, not missing the way Johnny looks up at her. 

“You’d tell me if I did?” He asks, Michelle smirking as she nods. 

“Don’t you know that about me by now?”

Johnny laughs, feeling something click into place between them as he says, “Yeah, I do.”

Michelle holds his gaze for a beat only for the both of them to realize that they’re staring at each other— turning their attention back to the television.

She can’t remember why they were watching this movie in the first place and she’s already missed the first few minutes but can’t bring herself to speak up and ask him to rewind it— if only because there’s something buzzing in the air that she doesn’t want to give a name to.

It’s electric and intense and completely terrifying, swallowing down the lump in her throat as her heart starts to beat a little faster at the realization that they’re alone in her apartment. 

It was, to put it mildly, completely ridiculous. Johnny’s come over to her place more times than she can count, just as she’s been alone with him and he and Ned’s the same.

But there’s something different now, something that Michelle can only attribute as being a realization that she doesn’t want to face— the all too real understanding that from the look on Johnny’s face seconds before that _he_ feels it too. 

It’s like there’s an electric current in the air, filled with nervous energy and _anticipation_ , something Michelle doesn’t want to dwell too much on because of _who_ she feels it with.

Michelle doesn’t know how to make sense of her feelings, not because she isn’t touch with her emotions but because it was… confusing. Of course she loved Johnny, he was _Johnny_. He’d become one of her closest friends when Peter was still alive and become even more of a key figure in her life now that he was gone. 

There was guilt there and an uncomfortable nudge in the back of her mind, that she could even _think_ to have feelings for him when he’d been one of Peter’s best friends-- the dark thought running through her that maybe she _is_ a cape chaser since she was able to develop these feelings for Johnny but didn’t have them for Ned.

Michelle swallows down that terrible thought just as quickly as it came, if only because she knows that she can’t lie to herself like that.

Whatever the muddy origins of them, her feelings for Johnny are real-- just as the growing suspicion that Johnny doesn’t think of her as _just_ a friend or his dead best friend’s girlfriend are becoming more and more abundantly clear from the sideways glances that he’s giving her. 

Michelle feels like they’re about to reach a boiling point, feeling the temperature start to rise and distantly wondering to herself if Johnny had something to do with it since she didn’t know the full extent of his powers anyway as the movie plays-- only to feel like she’s going to choke on her own tongue when she realizes just how long the movie has shifted, the two characters facing each other in the rain. 

_“I hate you!”_

_“No you don’t, you love me. Admit it.”_

Michelle feels her throat grow dry as she watches the characters argue, hearing the swell of the music and the dramatic thunderstorm in the background serving as the spark of lightning that they need-- shifting uncomfortably on the couch as they start to make out, moving their way to the bedroom. 

She’s intimately aware now that she herself never got undressed, that she’s still in her office clothes and wondering how blatantly obvious it would be to excuse herself now to get changed-- only to realize that it wouldn’t be obvious if Johnny didn’t think there was anything between them to begin with-- when Johnny says, “They’re really going at it huh?”

Michelle looks over to him, working hard to calm her beating heart for fear that he could hear it-- only to remember that superhearing wasn’t likely one of _his_ super powers as Johnny smirks. She can see the tightness in his smile and in his eyes, the mood lighting of her apartment casting shadows across his brown skin as he continues, “You’d think they’d talk about it first.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Michelle says, playing with fire in more ways than one, “they have chemistry.”

“You think so?” Johnny asks, hearing his voice catch as he stares at her-- Michelle getting the distinct impression that he’s not talking about the characters on the television screen just as she isn’t.

“Yeah,” Michelle says, a lot more breathless than she wanted to be as she clears her throat, “I mean when you know, you know right?” 

“Yeah, for sure,” Johnny says a little too quickly, Michelle seeing the twitch of his fingers as they hold each other’s gaze.

It’s the same kind of look in his eyes that he had the last time he was over, a look that stokes the coil of heat deep in her belly, a look that makes Michelle feel more alive than she has in months as she inhales sharply.

For a moment she feels as if this is it, as if they’re both suspended in animation-- like time couldn’t touch them and wouldn’t break so long as they continued to stare at each other.

Michelle’s heart starts to hammer in her chest when she leans in, feeling Johnny do the same only for the buzzer for her apartment to go off relentlessly-- startling that this was the second time in a row that some outside influence had stopped them when she turns to it.

“The pizza,” she says, mostly to herself-- taking the beat to launch herself from the couch and head to the door to let the pizza guy in, heart still pounding in her chest and her mind racing as she tries to reconcile this happening to the two of them _twice_.

Michelle didn’t believe in signs from the universe but she did begin to wonder now if she was just looking for excuses, looking for some kind of trapdoor to get herself out of this path that she feels like she’s walking toward-- feeling Johnny’s presence behind her as the pizza guy comes up and she pays him, bringing the pizza boxes to the oven of her tiny kitchen.

“Pizza’s here,” she says a little helplessly, not even trying to ignore the awkwardness that’s filled the space between them. She glances up and sees Johnny staring at her, silent and if he’s debating something as he searches her eyes. 

“Yeah,” he says, not making a movie towards it as she sets the pizza down and faces him. 

Michelle can see two paths in front of her, can see it just as clearly as she can see Johnny in front of her. 

She can make the decision to play it off, to wonder if there was something else out there telling her that she should stop this-- that it was too soon and even if it wasn’t too soon that it was with the wrong person, that of all the people in New York City or the world that she could develop feelings for-- it can’t, it _shouldn’t_ be Johnny fucking Storm. 

There’s another path here, another decision she can make-- so close that she can taste it. It’s a decision that holds a hell of lot more risk, a hell of a lot more to lose if she’s misread the signals and the signs-- even more to lose if she _hasn’t_ considering the state of the world and the fact that her dating life, much less Johnny’s, was something that could trend on Twitter.

Michelle’s never been very good at waiting, taking a deep breath before taking a step forward-- Johnny meeting her halfway.

“I--” Johnny begins, taking a shaky breath, Michelle seeing the certainty in his eyes as he searches hers. 

Michelle takes the leap, crossing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around Johnny as she pulls him close, crashing her lips onto his. 

Maybe it’s an on the nose metaphor but Michelle can’t help but feel like a match has been lit between the two of them. 

Johnny’s hands are warm and soft and all-consuming, his hands immediately coming to wrap around her as she pulls him in-- inhaling sharply when his tongue swipes across her bottom lip and then slips into her mouth, pulling him in closer as he shifts their position so her back is digging into the kitchen counter. 

Distantly-- somewhere way, _way_ in the distance-- Michelle wonders if they should talk about this, if they should speak words with their tongues rather than consuming each other as they were. But that’s quickly shoved away for the feel of Johnny’s hands all over her, cupping her breast as she grinds her hips against him— feeling him start to harden as she gasps into his mouth. 

“The pizza’s gonna get cold,” Michelle says instead, even if she doesn’t make an effort to move towards the pizza but rather moving her hands to pull off Johnny’s shirt. Johnny sucks at her bottom lip before leaning back and doing it for her, rush of cold air flowing over her as he does then says, “I can heat it up.” 

They stare at each, Michelle’s stomach churning into knots in more ways than one as she takes him in— the red of her lipstick smudged across Johnny’s lips in a way that fills her with both dread and desire. 

This is a moment, another pause-- another signal that they could stop, that they could talk, they could _think_ about this thing that they’re doing.

She doesn’t, bringing Johnny back to her-- eager to taste him again, eager to feel him pressed against her, the burning desire coming back in full force when Johnny softly moans into her mouth as she palms at his dick over his jeans, hearing him harden even more against her hand as her other hand wraps around his neck to pull him in. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Johnny says as he jerks his hips against her palm, Michelle rubbing her hand against him until she can’t take it anymore-- moving it away as Johnny himself digs his hands into her hips, grinding against her as she moves her hands to take off her bra underneath her shirt. 

Johnny helps her, first grabbing at the hem of her shirt and pulling it off before slowing them down-- his tongue darting out to taste her across her neck and then the top of her breast, Michelle throwing her head back and moaning in pleasure as Johnny’s hands nimbly take off her bra, helping him let it fall to the side before Johnny immediately takes her breast into her mouth-- tongue laving over nipple while his other hand comes up to play with the other, thumb swiping as Michelle closes her eyes.

Johnny is loud and funny and flirty and yet Michelle completely underestimated how well his tongue can work, switching his attention from one breast the other before Michelle pulls his face up to kiss him again-- already wet and wanting as she grinds against him. 

“Here?” Johnny asks against her lips, Michelle’s brain short circuiting for a moment before she nods-- thinking that if she allowed herself the chance to move away from this moment that she’ll second-guess herself, that they’ll second guess what they’re doing. Something Michelle doesn’t want to do. 

She wants him, she wants _this_ \-- the hard line of Johnny’s erection pressing into her center until she turns around-- facing her back towards him as she moves her hair out of the way, bracing her hands against the counter as she says, “Condoms are in the third drawer.”

Johnny moves quickly, silently-- neither of them saying anything and the apartment silent save for the sex scene still going on in the living room from the movie and from their own heavy breathing, Michelle working her jeans and underwear off in one fell swoop-- hearing Johnny’s own belt start to clack against his hands.

“You got it?” Michelle asks, feeling her chest heave as her heart still beats like a drum in her chest, only to gasp when Johnny comes up right behind her-- feeling his dick against her as he wraps a hand around to her center, his fingers easily finding her clit and rubbing a tight circle against her as she presses herself into him. 

“Got it,” he whispers into her ear, Michelle shivering with desire as her grip on the counter tightens, closing her eyes and leaning her head back into Johnny as his fingers continue to work. “You ready?”

“Fuck, yes. Please,” Michelle nearly whines, thinking that she needed to have a better imagination since her sex dreams didn’t compare to this. Johnny groans, rutting against her before getting a grip on himself-- figuratively and literally as he pulls a hand away from her clit and back to her hip, Michelle leaning over the counter and spreading her legs as Johnny guides himself to her entrance.

Michelle waits, taking a breath and then Johnny slowly pushes in-- Michelle panting as she bends herself even more across the counter. Johnny is slow but not gentle, testing the waters slowly with a push and pull that makes her breath catch. He bottoms out with the third thrust, Michelle feeling him shake behind her from holding himself back-- a low moan as he presses his forehead against her back.

 _“_ Oh shit, MJ. Shit, _fuck_ this is--”

“Fuck me,” she says, impatient and wanting and desperately wanting him to move as she adjusts her position to push her hips back, Johnny’s choked off sound churning her on as he immediately listens to her request. “Fuck me. Fuck-- _uh_.” 

Johnny doesn’t need anymore encouragement, thrusting his dick into her with a speed and with an intensity that’s overwhelming-- Michelle panting as she digs her palms into the counter to try and match his movements. 

“Fuck you’re tight. You’re so tight, you’re so good. Fuck, MJ,” Johnny starts to pant out even more so, whining as he pulses into her. 

“ _Johnny_ ,” Michelle says, holding on to the counter and focusing less on her feelings or the situation or what’s going on-- the only thoughts and feeling she has being the all-consuming pleasure that Johnny is driving her towards.

It feels so good, his dick slickly moving in and out of her— bigger than Brad but not like—

 _No,_ Michelle thinks as she pants, refusing to think of the ghost between them as she pushes back, palms flat on the counter and her knees banging against the counter as Johnny’s hips snap against her at a punishing pace, their rhythm disjointed but still working together towards release. 

He finishes first, filling into the condom as Michelle gasps-- Johnny moaning and panting out her name against her back as he pulses into her. Michelle’s not there yet but close-- letting him ride out his orgasm until his hips start to stutter before he brings a hand down to her clit, working his hand in tandem with hers until Michelle comes-- panting out hard and feeling herself ripple around his softening dick. 

“Sorry,” he says, Michelle still too far gone to understand what it is until he pulls out, Johnny clarifying as she braces her hands against the countertop again. “Sorry, I-- I like making my partner finish before me but--”

“It’s okay,” Michelle says, partly because of the endorphins she’s currently riding an incredible high on and because it is-- working to catch her breath when she finally leans back to look at him.

“That was…” Johnny says, leaning back against her fridge before taking a beat, tying off the condom and dropping it ino the trash.

“Good,” Michelle says, standing up a little even if her legs still feel a little wobbly. “It was good. For me, I--”

“Fucking incredible,” Johnny says as Michelle smirks, feeling a slight twinge of awkwardness now between them. 

There’s a beat, staring at each other in the afterglow of each of their orgasms— another pause where they could talk about this, could at least mention that she’d jumped him in her kitchen and he’d willingly complied— fucking her without question, something that Michelle can’t even deny she wants to happen again.

Maybe when you know, you know. Maybe it’s chemistry.

 _Maybe this is just another sex dream_ , she thinks. 

“I’m gonna go change, maybe shower,” Michelle says, stepping out of her pants and gathering up into her arms. 

“Okay,” Johnny says, staying silent for a moment though it’s clear he wants to say something.

Michelle takes another leap, wondering if this was too forward only to shove that away as ridiculous considering the only reason her legs feel wobbly are because of how hard he’d fucked her as she says, “You want to join me?”

Johnny huffs out a laugh, his forehead and his chest slick with sweat as he grins— seeing the consent in his eyes before he says, “Hell yeah.”

Michelle laughs, before nodding towards the bathroom-- ignoring the test of the things that have gone unsaid as he follows after her. 

* * *

“What are we doing?” Michelle asks as she grinds her hips into Johnny, closing her eyes in pleasure as he pulses his hips into her on the couch.

“Do you want— uh— want to stop?” Johnny pants out, Michelle leaning her head back as she bounces on him— his soft gasps as she does so turning her on just as much as his hand playing with her nipple does.

“Fuck no,” Michelle says, moaning as she pulls her head forward— wrapping her arms around his neck as he moves hands down to her hips, crying out as he pistons into her, holding her in place.

They’d moved from fooling around in the shower to fooling around against the door to now being on the couch— Johnny being given enough time to be ready once again, even if he’d made damn sure to make up for finishing first in the kitchen— making Michelle come with his fingers in the shower and with his tongue against the door.

She’s close again, his breath smelling like the pizza that neither of them had cared to heat up— giggling like they were in high school, like they were sneaking around, like this thing between them meant something.

As Johnny swipes his thumb across her clit, pushing over the edge once more— Michelle begins to second-guess herself, to wonder if the raw sexual chemistry between them was just that and nothing more.

She’s too dazed to dwell on it as she collapses on top of him, too tired to keep going as Johnny shifts their position— letting him lay her on her back and lift her leg up, goading him on as he chased his own release.

When Johnny comes, Michelle is staring at him— watching his eyes close and his mouth open, his curls now slick with sweat— relishing in how good he looked when he came and how right this moment feels.

Johnny lets his body weight rest on her for a moment as hips come to a stuttering stop before he pulls out, Michelle holding back a laugh as he leans back on the couch— tying off the condom as he says, “This couch needs a deep clean.”

“You can pay for it,” she says breathlessly, Johnny laughing as he extends his hands out and across the couch— Michelle sitting up as he looks over to her.

Now, exhausted and more satisfied than she’s been in months, Michelle allows herself to question what they’re doing again— seeing from the shift in Johnny’s eyes that he’s thinking of the same thing. 

Michelle swallows, moving to a stand before saying, “So.”

“So,” Johnny says as Michelle grabs the shirt she’d put on after their shower, “that was… fun?”

Michelle can’t help how she pauses at that, grabbing at the shirt as she says, “Yeah. Yeah, it was—“

“That wasn’t a question, by the way. It was-- it was fun. Really fun. A stupid good amount of fun,” Johnny actually begins to ramble, Michelle thinking she could laugh if it wasn’t for how exposed she felt right now-- figuratively and literally as she shoves her shirt back on.

“Like if you wanted to do it again, I’d be so down, kind of fun but also like— like if you don’t want—“

“I get it, J,” Michelle says, cutting him off to save him from himself, feeling second-hand embarrassment as Johnny sheepishly grins, “Lots of good, consensual fun over here.”

“Yeah,” Johnny replies before tying off the condom, Michelle completely unable to stop herself watching his bare ass as he goes to throw it away. “Yeah, I—“

Johnny’s phone starts to buzz, Michelle for once being glad for the interruption just because the reality of what they’ve just done— multiple times— is starting to sink in.

Johnny answers it, his face growing solemn in the way it always does when he talks to Sue— Michelle barely hearing her voice from the other line before Johnny hangs up.

“I gotta…”

“Yeah, okay,” Michelle says, looking around at the mess of the apartment that they’d made. Johnny looks hesitant, like he’s seeing that he’s leaving her in a state of disarray, like he’s questioning how to approach this.

Like he knows— just as Michelle does— of the person they’re refusing to acknowledge in the moment. 

“You should go,” Michelle says, Johnny’s head snapping up and seeing a brief flash of hurt fly across his face until she quickly amends, “before Sue gets pissed.”

Johnny grins but Michelle doesn’t miss the way it doesn’t reach his eyes as he says, “I’m her favorite brother.”

“You’re her only brother,” Michelle says, an easy joke between the three of them— a joke that Michelle distinctly remembers because that’s the night that Peter in a fit of stupid jealousy, had pouted on the way home— feeling like he was being pushed out of a friendship that only existed because of him.

The irony of this isn’t lost on her.

If Johnny remembers that night, he doesn’t say it— finishing getting ready and leaving out the front door for a change— turning back to Michelle with a conflicted expression on his face.

“So…” Johnny begins, Michelle waiting to see if he had any idea of how to complete that sentence anymore than she did— only for him to clamp his lips together as he says, “you going to gnocchi night at May’s?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Michelle replies as if that’s what Johnny wanted to talk about— filled with dread now of how the hell she’s gonna be able to act normally around _May_ , much less with May _and_ Johnny together. 

“Cool, I’ll uh, I’ll see you there?” He says it like a question even if she’s already said she would go, biting back a laugh.

“See you then.”

Johnny finally leaves, Michelle closing and locking the door behind her before pressing her forehead against it— the whispers of a memory creeping back to her, whispers of a person that used to share her bed and her heart, almost _feeling_ the gentle presence of someone who was buried six feet underground.

“Not tonight,” she whispers— to herself, to the universe, to the suffocating weight of loss that seems to hang around everything that she does or doesn’t do.

Michelle can’t do it tonight, can’t dwell on the dead and what he would think. 

Not when she’s here. Not when she’s alive.

Now when she hasn’t decided for herself what she wants to believe.


	7. Chapter 7

**[11:15am] Nedward:** I know you’re pissed at me but milo is fucking amazing

 **[11:15am] Nedward** : literally fucking amazing. think i died and came back to life.

 **[11:15am] Nedward:** hah. get it? came? 

**[11:16am] MJ:** gross

**[11:16am] Nedward** : don’t gross me when i had to listen to you talk about your sex dreams about johnny

 **[11:16am] Nedward:** speaking of

 **[11:16am] Nedward:** how did things go with johnny

 **[11:17am] Nedward:** don’t ignore me I know you’re staring at the phone

**[11:41am] Nedward:** seriously? 

**[12:13pm]** **Nedward:** im not gonna bug you if you really dont want to talk about it but im also not gonna leave it alone you know that right 

**[12:14pm] MJ:** that doesn’t make any sense

**[12:14pm] Nedward:** so you ARE getting my messages. 

* * *

Ned stares with the kind of unreadable expression that shouldn’t be allowed, fighting the urge not to squirm around uncomfortably in her seat.

She’d ignored Ned’s texts for the better part of a day, only to finally cave and ask if he’d want to get an early dinner at the Tino’s, a taco stand that they both liked and was halfway between their apartments.

The fact that Michelle didn’t recommend Alejandro’s— the place she liked more but that Johnny also frequented— was something that surely didn’t go unnoticed.

Yet here they are now, sitting across from each other silently, Michelle waiting to see how she should gauge his reaction to the bomb that she’d just dropped on him. 

“So,” Ned finally says after what feels like an eternity of silence, “you _didn’t_ talk with Johnny last night?”

“Nope,” Michelle says, popping the ‘p’ of the word as she holds her ground-- keeping her features neutral as Ned studies her. 

“But you had sex with him?”

“Several times,” Michelle says, seeing the face that Ned makes and not particularly caring-- if only because she needs to tell someone about this and Ned is probably definitely her best friend at this point. 

Aside from Johnny but considering she’s having a mild freak-out about having had sex with him, he’s not in the running. 

“And now you’re… what?” Ned asks before the taco truck guy calls out their order, Michelle jumping up to grab it before she has to answer the question.

Because that’s the thing, the problem if it could even be called such a thing.

Michelle’s had sex dreams about Johnny. She’s had sex with him. She loves him-- as a friend for sure but also a possible romantic partner, that even if he’d made her come harder last night than she has in recent memory that the whole sex thing wasn’t really _proof_ but more confirmation of what she already knew.

She was _in_ love with Johnny Storm and for the first time in a long time, Michelle wasn’t really sure what to do about it. 

“Three al pastor for you and three--”

“Don’t avoid the question,” Ned says, cutting her off as Michelle glares at him-- setting his food in front of him as she sits across from him again. “You wouldn’t have wanted to meet with me if you really didn’t want to talk about this.”

Michelle frowns, hating how well Ned knows her but also kind of glad because of how well he knows her as he pushes his food a little to lean forward on the table that they’re at. 

“What does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” Michelle says a little helplessly, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried to avoid the headache that could come from spilling out her feelings like this. 

“What do you _want_ it to mean?” Ned asks, Michelle bringing her hand down and glaring at him once again.

“Don’t do that. If I wanted to meet with my therapist, I would’ve,” she says, Ned frowning as he squints at her.

“I don’t really know what it is that you want from me then, MJ,” Ned says simply, Michelle making a face as he continues, “What could you possibly want me to say to this?”

“That I’m being a stupid, horny idiot that has every chance of wrecking probably one of the best friendships I’ve ever had because I’m being a stupid, horny idiot? That this is the worst idea either of us could’ve made since we’re already talked about relentlessly on the internet anyway? Maybe that even if none of that even mattered that Peter--”

And that’s when Michelle breaks, cutting herself off because of the massive lump in her throat-- because of the ghost sitting there with them-- because of the painful reality that she doesn’t want to face. 

Michelle has certainly debated all the reasons she’s thrown at Ned, ran them over and over in her mind for why and how they’re excuses to call Johnny up and tell them that what they did was a horny mistake that should never happen again even if she absolutely didn’t want to because she didn’t believe that herself. 

But it’s that final reason-- the one reason that she can’t bring herself to face, the person that is the only reason she knows Johnny in the first place and a truth that anyone with a brain cell would be able to recognize if they looked at it.

Regardless of what feelings that she has for Johnny, regardless of how long they’d been possibly building-- if Peter was alive, they wouldn’t be an option.

If Peter was alive, Michelle would’ve never given Johnny a second thought.

If Peter were to come back from the dead right this second, Michelle can’t even lie and say that she’d struggle.

She would choose Peter. 

But the hitch, the kicker, the worst fucking part of all of it-- something that Ned seems to intimately understand from the way his face falls as Michelle takes a sip of her drink and works to compose herself-- is that that’s just the thing.

Peter isn’t coming back. 

Peter is dead.

Michelle is alive. And so is Johnny.

“He’s not Peter,” Ned says gently, quiet and thoughtful in a way that only Ned Leeds could really be. “But that’s a good thing right?”

Michelle nodding as she swallows down her drink and sets it down.

“I guess,” she says with a laugh that’s a little too bitter. “Don’t think he’d like this though.”

Michelle stares off into the distance, watching the city and the people mill back and forth-- wondering now if maybe she was foolish to ever think that she could live with this unabiding ache in her chest. Some days it was easy to manage, as easy as a cutting, devastating loss could be. She had more good days than bad ones, the ability to learn how to live with something like this feeling less and less like she was treading water and more like she was swimming towards _somewhere_.

“Peter was my best friend,” Ned says, Michelle forcing herself to look at him as Ned seems to gather his thoughts, “I knew him since the first grade. He’s-- he was the best friend I could’ve ever had.”

Ned Leeds wasn’t unemotional by any means-- he was cried at car commercials and gave hugs freely and made Michelle think that even if the world was inherently shitty that maybe it couldn’t be, if people like Ned Leeds existed. 

She’s taken aback by how firm Ned looks, staring at her with dry eyes as he says, “I don’t think he’d want this for you. I think he’d be okay with this.

“With me being with Johnny?” Michelle asks incredulously, only for the wind to be taken out of her when Ned continues.

“With you being _happy_.” 

* * *

Johnny doesn’t show up to gnocchi night. 

Michelle should’ve guessed that he wouldn’t-- even if the excuse he gave of the Four having to fly out again to Latveria seemed less of an excuse considering the near constant news coverage about it now. 

Johnny had a fledgling relationship with May that had deepened after Peter died but it wasn’t the same as the one Michelle had, probably made that much more awkward with the knowledge of what the two of them had done earlier that week-- even if this time around, Ned didn’t ditch.

“Are you gonna tell her?” Ned whispers to Michelle as she uses her fork to spiral the gnocchi the same way May taught her.

“ _Shut up_ ,” Michelle whispers as Ned snickers, May popping her head in as she asks, “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Michelle says a little too quickly, inwardly wincing since May knows her too well now to truly believe that as Michelle continues, “Ned’s just doing it wrong.”

“I’m not doing it _wrong_ , I’m doing it the same way you are,” Ned scowls, Michelle smirking since even if Ned is gracious enough not to push Michelle in talking about something that she doesn’t want to-- much less _this_ particular subject in front of the woman who would’ve been her mother-in-law if the universe was kinder-- that this was also something that he was particularly sensitive about. 

Something that Michelle unabashedly uses to her advantage since despite what Ned seemed to think, her gnocchi always turned out better than his. 

“It’s good to know some things never change,” May says fondly before turning her attention back to the sauce-- both Michelle and Ned falling silent as they quietly resume molding the gnocchi. 

Quiet because it’s a reminder to the both of them, Michelle most of all, what this new development with Johnny means-- a question that even if some metal masked idiot wasn’t giving the Four a reason to use taxpayer dollars in Eastern Europe if he still would’ve showed up because of it.

Michelle could never, _ever_ replace Peter and she would never want to-- Johnny being a completely distinct person, much less the feelings she has for him being different in a way that was wholly Johnny.

But of all the people in New York City for her to have feelings for, feelings that feel a hell of a lot more serious than the casual hookups she’s had for months, the fact that it was _Johnny Storm_ \-- one of Peter’s best friends and the one person that Peter had joked on more than one occasion that the two of them would get married someday, had it not been for Peter meeting MJ first, wasn’t lost on her. 

Michelle gets a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach then, profoundly unhungry as she quietly works on the gnocchi and thinking of whether or not she had feelings for Johnny that went unspoken when Peter was alive-- questioning now if his jokes were purely based on an insecurity or because he could sense it, as if he _knew_ something that she hadn’t been able to pick up for herself. 

Michelle doesn’t know what to do about that.

* * *

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Michelle says as she adjusts her tassel, thinking that she should’ve just rode along with a friend of hers to graduation rather than accepting her parents’ offer to drive her there, the fact that they were making it feel as if it was a much bigger deal than what she originally anticipated.

It wasn’t as if Michelle _didn’t_ recognize that it was a big deal-- she knew that it was. But she wasn’t in the right headspace to celebrate her accomplishment right now or to be at the center of attention, not when there was a conflicting desire of desperately wanting Johnny to be there while simultaneously hoping that he didn’t.

She wanted Johnny to be there-- as her friend, as someone she cared about, as someone who had been there with her at rock bottom and one of the only people who agreed with her when she said she wasn’t going to take a leave of absence. But she didn’t want him there because of the attention, because of the fact that they haven’t had a solid, real conversation between the two of them since they’d seen each other naked, because she’s terrified of what she’ll do when she sees him and maybe a little more terrified of how he’ll be.

The longer Michelle has to stew about the possibilities of what her feelings for Johnny may or may not mean for their friendship, much less what the rest of the world is gonna think-- the more she worries if maybe Johnny has his own reservations-- anything that she might be feeling guilty about likely compacted by the fact that Johnny was the outsider here. 

She’d been friends with him for years and could still see it in his eyes when her and Ned were hanging out-- even more so now that Peter was gone-- this _guilt_ of getting to be happy with them and getting to be in their space, a look that told her that Johnny thought about his place with them just as much as Michelle thought about it. 

“Something’s wrong Meesh,” her mom says, throwing her out of her thoughts as she looks at her from the reflection in the mirror, “and we don’t have to talk about it now, but we’re gonna talk about it.” 

“Mom…”

“Don’t ‘mom’ me,” her mother says, all business as she checks her watch, “Let’s head downstairs. Your father should be done getting the car out of that double marked mess that he had it in by now.”

Michelle is twenty-five but feels five years old as she listens to her mother without complaint, going through the motions to lock her apartment door, ride with them to her graduation ceremony and try not to actively think of throwing up when they finally arrive.

Graduation itself is boring as hell, as graduations usually are. Michelle is tacitly avoiding looking at her phone to see if Johnny is going to show up or if he’s still halfway across the world, not sure which she wants more all things considered. 

Michelle can feel a headache coming on, picking at the skin between her index and thumb and smiling to herself as the graduation speaker drones on and on. 

_“You want to know a really cool fact?”_

_“Not really but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me,” she says as Peter laughs, nuzzling his face into her neck as she drifts her fingers up and down his back-- tired in the best way, feeling safe and content and as if she could fall asleep._

_“Today I learned,” Peter said, kissing her on the cheek, on the lips, pulling her closer, “that if you pinch the skin between your index finger and thumb that it helps stop headaches. It’s acupuncture.”_

_Michelle hummed, too tired to try and ask him where he got that information when Peter laughs, pulling her closer._

_“You’re not gonna talk to me about my really cool fact?”_

_“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Michelle mumbled, Peter’s soft laughter the last thing she remembered that night._

_“Okay, MJ,” he said, snuggling her closer before she fell asleep._

Michelle smiles as she presses the skin again, firm like Peter had taught her how to the day after--the graduation speaker droning on in the background fading into the distance when she thinks of Peter and what he would say.

She’d been trying so hard to avoid him, trying so hard not to think about what this means that she loves Johnny and what it means for Peter and what it means, what it means, what it means-- only for it to strike her that she was going about this all wrong. 

There was no roadmap to understanding grief, no guide for how to best cope or how to best live your life after a significant part of it is gone. Maybe there was a level of familiarity in falling in love with Johnny, in wanting him, in wanting to be _with_ him in a way. Maybe Peter was right, so much more perceptive than anyone ever liked to believe that he was, that there was something between her and Johnny even when Peter was alive. 

Michelle can’t think of a world where she wouldn’t have continuously chosen to be with Peter but then what did Michelle know anyway-- all the things she thought she had prepared for when it came to the possibility of living in a world after Peter died and all of it getting thrown out the window when he actually did. 

She’d thought more of how she would respond, how she would live, how she would try and move forward-- but never about Peter’s identity being revealed and what that would mean for her, for Ned, and for May. She hadn’t anticipated that it would be two years after Peter died and he was still mourned for as if it was yesterday-- something that was both comforting and hard as hell to try and live through this kind of loss when everywhere she went, there was a reminder that Peter was gone. 

But just as Michelle refused to leave the city where she had all her best memories, she realized she should refuse to allow this to define her-- refuse to push Peter outside of her heart and her mind when it comes to her feelings with Johnny when it as an inevitable fact that he would forever be tied to her and to him and to the two of them. 

_Maybe Ned was right_ , Michelle thinks to herself, massaging the skin between her index finger and her thumb. 

Peter would want her to be happy. 

And if Johnny was the one who did, who gave her the kind of feelings that she didn’t think she’d feel ever again-- much less so soon-- than Michelle was going to have to make her peace with that. 

* * *

Johnny doesn’t show up to graduation.

When Michelle finally checks her phone, she understands why. She can see the news alerts accumulating, an uncomfortable feeling in her gut about how much danger that he’s in and the painfully familiar ache of knowing what it's like to love someone and know that there’s nothing you can do to help them.

She knows her mom can tell that something’s going on with her and that she’s distracted, being able to see through the facade that Michelle has learned more effectively how to give in a world that didn’t care about what she thought or how she was feeling.

But she also doesn’t push it when they’re out in public, doesn’t push it for the pictures or when Michelle checks her phone throughout their celebratory lunch.

She doesn’t push it right up until the moment they’re back at her parents place, when Michelle is in the kitchen grabbing something different to drink and using that as an excuse to check her phone once more without Ned staring at her when she sees her mom out of the corner of her eye.

Michelle glances up, not even bothering to try and explain what she’s doing-- watching her mom calmly walk up to her and ask, “Is he okay?”

“I think so,” Michelle says, hating that this conversation feels like deja vu-- especially after her mom knew the truth about Spider-Man and they’d done this very thing together, Michelle sneaking away from people so she didn’t have to pretend to be happy that the love of her life was fighting for his life. 

Michelle’s not sure how deep or consuming her love for Johnny is but the parallels of it, the familiarity of it, cuts at her all the same.

Her mom considers her for a beat, nodding once before saying, “He has people. Sue, Reed, the rock guy.”

“Ben,” Michelle says quietly, laughing as the corner of lips quirk upwards before it falls back down-- Michelle waiting for the penny to drop as her mom searches her eyes. 

“Are _you_ okay?”

“I don’t know,” Michelle whispers, so glad that her mom understands her-- that she can _see_ it in her eyes that it’s more than just Johnny being in danger but it’s the fact that she’s in love with him, that it’s so painfully obvious at least to anyone who knows her that she’s in love with him, that she’s still here-- that Peter has been buried is six feet underground for almost two years and yet she’s still _here_ \-- holed up in the corner of a room of a party, hoping and wishing and constantly checking to make sure the person she loves is okay.

Michelle breaks at that, breaks at the teenager who had a crush on a superhero, who was terrified of losing him right up until she did-- breaking at the woman with just graduated with a master’s degree and an army people who love her that’s still right in the same place and yet completely different, in love with a superhero and who knows _exactly_ what it feels like to lose him-- breaks at the thought this was seemingly her lot in the universe if she believed in such a thing.

Her mom pulls her into a hug, one that Michelle falls into-- not quite sobbing but her breathing way more erratic to be called stable as her mom holds her upright, a parallel of how she’d been the night Peter died-- Michelle begging her mind to push that memory away.

She loved Johnny, she loved him so much that it hurt, loved him enough to _allow_ herself to be hurt like this again-- something she wasn’t sure she’d ever be okay with. 

As her mom holds her tight in the back of their kitchen, the sounds of people who all came to celebrate her, Michelle finally began to accept that. 


	8. Chapter 8

Johnny sends her flowers and a text, something Michelle would be more skeptical about if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew Johnny was currently holed up in the Baxter building-- having gotten a lot more than he bargained for while fighting the masked megalomaniac.

She’d wanted to go see him, as soon as she heard they were back but there was some issue with containment-- a gas that had kept them all in quarantine and the risk of exposure too great that Reed had insisted on them separating themselves from the public.

Naturally, this led to more late night talk show hosts talking about the excess of the Fantastic Four, of how maybe government sanctioned superheroes was a bad idea, harkening back to the Avengers and the good ole days of no accountability and point and shoot morality. 

Michelle didn’t pay attention to the news.

What she did pay attention to was the way Johnny was texting her, the look of the flowers and the card enclosed-- a card that she read over and over again like she was trying to decipher another message in it because she knows Johnny well enough to know that there’s more to it. 

_I told you I’d never want to let you down. I’m sorry I missed it._

_I promise to always try and lift you up._

_You deserve to see the sky._

_Happy graduation MJ._

Five lines and yet Michelle couldn’t stop obsessing over them, wondering what they could mean and wondering why she didn’t just call him up or text to him to ask-- the few times they went back and forth dancing around the conversation they both clearly need to have and yet both seem to understand that they need to have _in person_.

It’s something she actively tries not to think about in the days following their arrival, only to freeze when she walks into her apartment-- May behind her after one of their weekend hauls at the flea market-- wondering how she would explain this. 

Only to catch herself when she remembered that there’s nothing to explain. That May knows how close her and Johnny are, knows that he missed her graduation and knows that he gives gifts like Tony does-- expensive and ostentatious and freely as a means of showing affection.

She recovers just enough to not even miss a step as she invites May in, the two of them taking off their shoes to leave them at the door and Michelle closing and locking the door behind them as May moves to the kitchen with the produce they got. 

“I am _ready_ to get this started,” May says contentedly, Michelle smiling as she lays her own bags down-- only to freeze when she sees May’s eyes travel over to the counter as she sees the flowers. 

“Those are _beautiful_ ,” May says, leaving her place in Michelle’s tiny kitchen to marvel at the flowers-- Michelle being glad that the card is safely tucked away in her room as May asks, “Johnny?”

“What?” Michelle asks, gobsmacked that May was able to pick at who got them from her so quickly only to see a knowing look in May’s eyes. 

Michelle has known May Parker since she was fourteen years old, meeting both her and Ben at a parent’s night back when all the Midtown freshman met up for orientation. May Parker has seen her at her worst, at her best, has been there for her during the midst of her relationship with Peter and has stayed a constant even in the times that they broke up. May knows her almost as well as her own mother, a kind and gentle presence in her life that has never wavered. 

There’s a part of Michelle that wants to bank on the knowledge that May knows Johnny and her are best friends and that he missed her graduation as for why he would send her flowers. She wants to, but she doesn’t-- seeing the look in May’s eyes and feeling with perfect, horrifying clarity that May knows _why_ Johnny sent her flowers-- that May knows that there’s something more going on between the two of them. 

She really shouldn’t be all that surprised, considering the reason she loved May so much was in part for how similar she felt to her own mother. 

“Yeah,” Michelle says, her voice soft as she grips her box of goodies tighter-- setting it down on the counter and looking down to it as she says, “He was sorry to have missed graduation.”

“They’re beautiful,” May repeats, Michelle pointedly not looking at her as she unloads the box of vegetables she has-- only to be surprised when she hears May come up beside her. 

Michelle turns to her, looking up and seeing a fierce expression on May’s face-- one that makes her mouth feel dry as May smiles and says, “I’m glad.”

Michelle doesn’t trust herself to speak, not just because she’s trying to wrap her head around what exactly May is telling her even if a small part of her knows exactly what it is but because she thinks she could cry-- knowing full well that she doesn’t need anyone’s permission to live her life but realizing in that moment how much she wanted her blessing anyway. 

“He’d be so proud of you, you know,” May says, Michelle understanding immediately the _he_ they’re both speaking of-- the he that they would always be speaking of and know. 

Peter may have been the one that brought them together, but he wasn’t the one who would _keep_ them together. 

In that moment, standing in her kitchen and seeing the unabashed love in the eyes of the woman in front of her-- Michelle feels a little choked up, nodding as she tries to smile.

“I know,” Michelle says, May nodding in return.

“Good,” May replies, a gentle smile on her face. 

They hold each other’s gaze for a beat before May’s smile deepens, turning her attention back to the box of vegetables in front of Michelle as she asks, “Now tell me, do you want me to chop or wash?”

Michelle smiles, feeling the acceptance and the love and the comfort in knowing that no matter what comes with deciding to be with Johnny that she can trust that nothing will change with May-- a fear that she hadn’t given life to and yet here it was, killed before it even had the chance to take root. 

“Let’s do it together,” she says, May beaming at her. 

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * *

Michelle is full and content when May heads home-- alone in the quiet of her apartment. May had helped her clean up, organizing the leftovers and taking some of her own-- already making plans for the next farmer’s market they were going to check out next.

Michelle smiles to herself, reaching over to her kitchen counter where her phone was and swiping through her music playlists-- turning on her song so that the quiet of her apartment isn’t too loud. 

Michelle’s thoughts are fighting against her but Michelle doesn’t want to think-- not now, not when she feels good. It is a _good_ day, even with everything, and Michelle is going to enjoy it. 

She plays her music as she cleans up the rest of her apartment, tidying up things that she’d let slide as she got ready for graduation and for her new job. She plays her music as she puts away her dried and clean dishes, plays her music as she folds the laundry she hadn’t, plays her music as she gets ready for the next day.

Michelle’s putting away the things she needs only to stop when she comes across her sketchbook-- debating with herself if she wanted to take this with her. 

There was a metaphor here, bringing in the old with the new-- one that she didn’t really want to dwell on. There’s still half a book left, half-finished sketches that would always go half-finished-- taking the sketchbook in both of her hands as she looks over it. 

There’s a part of her that wants to put the sketchbook away on her bookshelf, to save it and to preserve it and to keep it safe. 

There’s a part of her that thinks that if anything were to happen to her sketches to Peter here, if anything were to happen to this sketchbook, that it would destroy her. 

Michelle’s thumb runs over the edge of it, thinking of how excited Peter had been when he bought it for her on the last birthday he was alive for-- his smile so bright that it was almost blinding at seeing her reaction. 

She smirks, bringing the sketchbook to her chest and closing her eyes-- correcting herself and deciding all the same. 

She’d already lost him, she thought it would destroy her. 

Michelle was still here, still standing, still surviving and living and thriving. 

Peter hadn’t lived his life like it was fragile. Michelle couldn’t continue to do the same.

She plays her music as she places her sketchbook into her bag to take with her wherever she went, humming and smiling and thinking already of what new sketches she’ll add to it tomorrow. 

* * *

Michelle took a day to herself. 

She declined meeting with Ned for lunch, promising him that it wasn’t a bad day. 

She texted her mom and her dad, laughed at the jokes that Tony sent her and the memes that Morgan did, making sure that she was in communication with her people-- save for one-- to let them know that despite what they may worry about, _she was okay_.

She was going to have a good day, she’d decided it the moment she woke up.

And it was. 

Michelle took herself out to eat, took herself out to a bookshop that she enjoyed, took herself even to a movie-- quiet and comfortable and enjoying the last few weeks she’d have before she’d start working full time. 

She was looking forward to the gallery, not enough to take them up on her offer to start work early but excited nonetheless-- glad that she’d had enough forethought to take this time off, rightly needing some time and some space to recenter herself-- even if she hadn’t realized back then how much she’d need it emotionally more than anything. 

It’s not until she’s home, out of the shower and glancing at her phone that she realizes just how good it was that she took this time to herself-- staring at the screen and knowing herself well enough to know that had she not, she would’ve avoided this for as long as she can. 

**[3:16pm] Fire Hazard:** are you home? 

Michelle stares at the text, freshly showered and in comfortable clothes-- debating within herself if she wants to answer. 

It’s been over a week since she’s seen him. Of course she wants to answer, because if Johnny is texting if she’s home then she knows what this means-- that he wants to talk. 

Michelle takes a steady breath, quickly typing out a reply.

 **[3:18pm] MJ** : yeah got about home 20 mins ago

Michelle waits, staring at the screen and waiting for the little text bubbles to pop up only to hear a knock at the door-- startling for a moment as she glances up. 

Her phone buzzes, bringing her attention back down to the screen as she looks down to it as she walks towards the door. 

**[3:18pm] Fire Hazard** : okay good cause that’s me outside your door and if you weren’t home i was gonna throw myself into the sun

Michelle’s laughing when she checks through the peephole to confirm it’s Johnny, unlocking the door and opening it.

“Hi,” Johnny says, brown eyes staring into hers with an intensity that surprises her.

“Hi,” Michelle says, realizing in that moment that they hadn’t physically seen each other since the last time he came over-- belatedly opening the door even more and letting him in. “Come in.”

“Got the all clear from Sue,” Johnny says as he does, slipping off his shoes as Michelle closes and locks the door behind him. 

“Wouldn’t think she’d let you out of her sight until you were okay,” Michelle says with a smile, feeling the slight lilt of awkwardness in her own voice just as she hears Johnny’s.

Johnny smirks, shoving his hands in his pockets as he says, “Yeah. You know her.”

“Yeah.”

Michelle’s back is to the door, staring at Johnny as he stares right back at her-- a tingling down her spine that feels so foreign and so familiar as Johnny just drinks her in. If she had somehow managed to fool herself into thinking that whatever had sparked between them was just in her head, it’s completely gone now-- the air feeling electric in a way that she knows has nothing do with Johnny having literal fire powers as she swallows down something in her throat. 

Johnny watches, his eyes drifting down to her lips then back up to her eyes. 

“I wanted--”

“We should--”

They both laugh, the tension between them loosening slightly as Johnny grins. 

“So. This is a little weird huh?”

“Little bit,” Michelle admits, her back still against the door-- pinching at the skin between her thumb and index finger to try and calm down. 

Johnny notices, eyes shifting down and a smirk on his face before he looks up at her. 

“Am I stressing you out?” 

Michelle makes a face, bringing her hand down as she asks, “Why do you say that?”

Johnny looks caught out, sheepishly nodding towards her hands as he says, “Just-- I mean, Peter. He told me once that that’s supposed to-- you know. Help headaches.”

“Acupuncture,” Michelle offers, Johnny nodding. 

“Yeah. I thought if he told me, he told you and…” 

Johnny trails off, the two of them seemingly realizing that Johnny’s stumbled right into the very thing they had been avoiding-- not just their feelings but what those feelings meant for the memory of the person who brought them together. 

“I uh,” Johnny begins, “I don’t know how to say this so I’m just gonna do it. I like you, a lot. Actually no, that’s-- that sounds stupid.”

Michelle huffs out a laugh, Johnny simultaneously grinning and looking exasperated as he says, “It’s like I’m in high school again.”

“Yeah,” Michelle says, her voice catching since she intimately remembers what it was like to share her feelings to the person she liked in high school, wondering now if Johnny even know about that considering they hadn’t been friends then-- considering he had been off in space, much less in some kind of Negative Zone that Michelle still didn’t know all the details about. 

What she does know is that from the look in Johnny’s eyes, he’s not some sixteen year old who _likes_ her. She can see it, she can _feel_ it-- the intensity of his gaze feeling like a blazing inferno if that wasn’t too much of an on the nose metaphor. 

Johnny loved her. But he was giving her the space to back out of this, the space to decide what she wanted while still making his own wants known. 

It’s a maturity she can appreciate, if only because the two of them have been through too much to play any games. 

“I know this is a lot,” Johnny says, “And I understand if this-- if this isn’t something you want right now, or ever. Last week was…”

“Fun?” Michelle teases, Johnny now looking a little sheepish. 

“You’re never gonna let me live that down are you?”

“Nope,” Michelle says with a smile, taking a step forward. 

She doesn’t miss the way Johnny stares at her, Michelle summoning up her courage as she says, “I like you too.”

Johnny doesn’t look surprised by her revelation but Michelle didn’t think he would be, not when he knows her as well as he does. Not when there’s years between them, not when there’s a life they’ve built together in the shadow of a life they both lost-- not when there’s so much that could be said and seeing in his eyes that he _understands_ in a way that maybe no one else really could. 

“This… might make things complicated,” Johnny says carefully, Michelle understanding his tone because she knows him so well. It goes without saying-- what it would mean for the two of them to be together, even removing the context of Peter and his life and his death and everything in between. 

Johnny Storm was an internationally renowned superhero. Michelle might have experience with dating a super, but not like this-- the fact that she’s dated one at all and that Peter’s identity was out as it was making anything between them that much more difficult.

But she wants this, Michelle thinks-- a feeling that’s filled with conviction that she can’t shake it, just as certain in what she’s feeling now and seeing the same in Johnny’s eyes. 

“I know,” Michelle says with that same certainty, Johnny taking a step forward as his gaze grows softer-- reaching for her hand as Michelle takes it, interlocking their fingers. 

“I like you,” Johnny says quietly, his lips inches away from her face-- the air feeling thin and heavy and light and buoyant all at the same time.

 _I love you too,_ Michelle thinks as she leans forward, closing her eyes and taking the leap as her lips meet his. 


End file.
